DSSC application, the dye-sensitized solar cells were constructed using the two different natural dyes (ivy gourd fruit extract and red frangipani flower extract) as the sensitizer. Typically, the effective light exposure area of the DSSCs was maintained at 1 cm2 and a liquid electrolyte composed of 0.05 M I2/0.5 M LiI/0.5 M tertbutylpyridine in methoxypropionitrile solution was used. The device performances were obtained under AM 1.5 solar illumination.
The detailed parameters such as short-circuit current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor (FF) and overall conversion efficiency (g) for the extract of fruits of ivy gourd and flowers of red frangipani are summarized in Table 1 and the corresponding photocurrent–voltage (J–V) curves are shown in Fig. 9. The cell based on the red frangipani flowers extract exhibited the maximum efficiency of around 0.30% whereas the cell based on the ivy gourd fruits extract gave efficiency of approximately 0.08%. The inset in Fig. 9 shows a J–V curve observed under similar exper-imental conditions of a device fabricated using standard N3 dye as
sensitizer.