Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of different nanocrystals synthesized in ferritin to act as light harvesters for high-efficiency solar cells. This study investigates the possibility of using these nanocrystals as alternative dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells. Four different dye-sensitized solar cells were successfully fabricated using iron, cobalt, manganese, and lead-sulfide n...

In this work, a method to assemble nanoscale hybrid solar cells in the form of a brush of radially oriented CdS nanowire crystals around a single carbon fiber is demonstrated for the first time. A solar cell was assembled on a carbon fiber with a diameter of ~5-10 μm which served as a core electrode; inorganic CdS nanowire crystals and organic dye or polymer layers were successively deposited o...

We propose a numerical model aimed at obtaining the electrical output of dye-sensitized solar cells from microscopic parameters. The model is based on the solution of the continuity equation as a function of voltage for electron transport with both the diffusion coefficient and the recombination constant dependent on the electron density, i.e., the light intensity and/or voltage. The density de...

The interest in dye-sensitized solar cells has increased due to reduced energy sources and higher energy production costs. For the most part, titania (TiO2) has been the material of choice for dye-sensitized solar cells and so far have shown to exhibit the highest overall light conversion efficiency ∼ 11 %. However, zinc oxide (ZnO) has recently been explored as an alternative material in dye-s...

The conversion of sunlight into electricity using solar cells has attracted very much attention during the last decades. Solar energy is clean, abundant and renewable. Solar cells found applications in many different fields such as in calculators, solar lamps and even on spacecraft and satellites. Historically, conventional solar cells were built from inorganic materials. The efficiency of such...

BODIPY (4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacenes) dyes possess intense absorption profiles that can be exploited in various light harvesting applications. However, redox stability and optimization of frontier molecular orbital energies in these dyes are critical for their successful incorporation into new solar cell materials. This article describes the synthesis and characterization of a fa...