Abstract

• The natural dye solutions were extracted from henna leave, red Dragon fruit flesh and red Spinach leave as photosensitizer for solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDSSCs). In this work, the ssDSSCs were fabricated using these natural dye extracts and their photovoltaic performance was examined against dye extracting temperature and relative ratio of co-solvents (dimethylformamide (DMF) and ethanol (EtOH)). It is found that the device efficiencies are almost insensitive to the extracting temperature for all dye extracts being studied. The efficiency of red Spinach devices decreased with increasing DMF concentration in ethanol whiles those of Henna and red Dragon fruit devices were almost invariant. Thus co-solvent effect would differ system to system. Among all, the efficiency of red Spinach device (extracted at 45 .C in EtOH) is as high as 0.11 %.