Deprotonated curcumin as a simple and quick available natural dye for dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In the present study, deprotonation of curcumin dye using potassium carbonate was performed successfully, which produced fairly stable deprotonated dye with a large bathochromic shift in the visible light absorption spectrum. The light-harvesting efficiency of this deprotonated dye was investigated in TiO2-based dye sensitized solar cells, which exhibited an energy conversion efficiency of 0.91%, and this value is 8.3 times higher than that of the dye sensitized solar cells with curcumin photosensitizer without deprotonation.