Abstract

This study investigates the performance of dye‐sensitized solar cells constructed with a Fe‐Cu metastable material as the mesoporous layer on which a natural organic dye is applied. The synthesis of the Fe‐Cu material is done via a high throughput process that produces nanosized particles from elemental metallic powders. Xanthophyll is singled out as the organic natural dye of choice among other dyes that were extracted, as it exhibited wider spectral absorptivity in terms of wavelength range and magnitude. Two compact solar cells were constructed and tested; one is a reference cell with a TiO₂ working electrode and the other with a Fe‐Cu working electrode. The results show a better power conversion efficiency for the Fe‐Cu‐based solar cell 0.943% compared to 0.638% for the TiO₂, and the number of carriers in the former is found to be orders of magnitude higher than the latter (10¹⁹ vs. 10³², respectively). A thorough optical, electrical, and thermal analysis of the Fe‐Cu material is conducted and used to explain the obtained results.

This study presents the unique result of the Fe‐Cu compound as a semiconducting nanoscale material to replace TiO₂ as a mesoporous layer. Although mechanical alloying is a well‐researched method for producing such a system, the novelty of this study is the attractive properties reported in this work.