Potential application of Ce doped NiO green synthesised from husk of Cocos nucifera in various types of DSSCs

ABSTRACT

In this study, a complete green synthesis procedure was approached to prepare two semiconductor oxide materials NiO and Ce-doped NiO in nanoscale, and natural dyes were extracted from the husk of tender coconut. To our knowledge, this is a novel work that reports Ce-doped NiO synthesized from husk of tender coconut. Coconut is being cultivated in more than 97 countries, and India contributes to 50% of its global production. After consumption of the nutritious liquid from the tender coconut, 33–35% of the fruit (mesocarp and endocarp) are being dumped as agro-wastes. In order to make capital of this wastes, they were utilized in fabricating different types of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). With the extracted natural dyes, and Rhodamine B, six DSSCs were made with NiO and Ce:NiO and two tandem structured DSSCs were devised with TiO₂ as one layer and synthesized NiO materials being the other layer. Tandem cell made with TiO₂ and Ce:NiO resulted in the promising power-conversion efficiency of 0.165% and the cell made with TiO₂ and NiO exhibited an efficiency of 0.06%.

KEYWORDS:

• DSSC
• tandem solar cell
• NiO
• Ce doped
• green-synthesis
• Rhodamine B

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Karpagam Academy of Higher Education for funding this work with seed money for research project (KAHE/R-Acad/A1/Seed Money/547/2022) dated 31.01.2022.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Author’s contributions

K. Inbarajan: Conceptualization; Investigation; Visualization; Writing – Original Draft; Writing – Review & Editing.

S. Sowmya: Investigation; Visualization; Writing – Review & Editing.

B. Janarthanan: Validation; Supervision; Project Administration.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Karpagam Academy of Higher Education [KAHE/R-Acad/A1/Seed Money/547/2022].

Notes on contributors

K. Inbarajan

K. Inbarajan completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. B. Janarthanan at Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore, India. His research thesis was focused on the fabrication of DSSC with natural sensitizers extracted from agro-wastes. He is now working as Assistant Professor at Karpagam Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India. At present his research work focuses on perovskite based-DSSCs.

S. Sowmya

Dr. S. Sowmya completed her PhD at Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, (Coimbatore, India) under the supervision of Dr. B. Janarthanan. At present she is working as Assistant Professor at PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore. Her research work focuses on the extraction of new natural dye sensitizers for fabrication of high potential DSSC.

B. Janarthanan

Dr. B. Janarthanan* completed his PhD from Bharathiar University (Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science) in 2007. His thesis was titled as “Transient Simulation Modeling of Floating cum Tilted- wick solar still and Secondary analysis of Solar Radiation”. At present he is working as the Professor & Head, Department of Physics, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education. He has guided 14 PhD scholars and 13 M.Phil scholars in the field of Solar Energy and its thermal and Photovoltaic applications. He has published several research articles in the field of Solar energy. In recent years, his research work focuses on the synthesis of dye sensitizers for DSSC and the methods to improve the efficiency of DSSCs.