Development of dithizone metal complex dyes for dye sensitized solar cells

Among the renewable energy resources, solar energy is a clean, free and unlimited source. Especially when considering geographic location of our country and annual sunshine duration (~2623 hour), solar energy has a special importance. Therefore, it's worth working and devoloping on solar cells that using light coming from the sun to produce electric energy. Silicon-based solar cells classified as 1st generation solar cells has high efficiency but their production cost is high too. 2nd generation solar cells which contain amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride (CdTe) etc. use thin film technology yet their production needs costly equipments and they have limited area of use. Finally, organic, perovskite and dye sensitized solar cells etc. is classified as 3rd generation solar cells. In this thesis, TiO2 and different metal (Fe, Ni, Co and Zn) doped TiO2 nanoparticles was synthesised with microwave assisted hydrothermal process. Also, dithizone and dithizone-metal complexes which is formed with Co, Zn was used as sensitizer for solar cells. Synthesised TiO2 and doped TiO2 nanoparticles was characterized with XRD, SEM, UV-VIS spectrophotometer, Particle Sizer. Dithizone and dithizone-metal-gallic acid complexes was characterized with UV-Vis spectrophotometer and FTIR. Prepared solar cells performance was analyzed with electrochemical workstation.