The effect of alum as additive in mix dye for Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC)

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is the third-generation solar cell that first co-invented by Michael Gratzel and Brian O’Regan. In this study, TiO 2 photoelectrode are sensitized with natural blackberry dye and spinach is used as co-sensitizer (mix dye). The aluminium sulphate, Al 2 (SO 4 ) 3 (alum) is used as the additives to treat the dye. FESEM and EDXs techniques are used to characterise the photoelectrodes, while UV-Vis and FTIR were used to examine the dye characteristics. Finally, I-V characteristic measurements were used to evaluate the performance of DSSCs. Based on the result, since of the inclusion of chlorophyll (spinach) in sensitizer, blackberry/spinach/alum performs somewhat worse than blackberry/alum because the findings on Uv Vis spectra indicates that peak of anthocyanin (blackberry) has decreased with the addition of chlorophyll (spinach). The highest efficiency (0.782%) is attained for devices that use a Blackberry/Alum sensitizer, based on device electrical parameters.