Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Jiang, Lin

Area of Concentration

Chemistry

Abstract

Natural Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (NDSSCs) derived from various plant sources have garnered attention for their simple, cost-effective, and eco-friendly extraction methods, which are more scalable than those of their synthetic counterparts, which often utilize rare or toxic inorganic metals. NDSSCs utilize the photosynthetic properties of the plant extracts to generate electricity. Raw Delonix regia flower pigments are rich in carotenoids, anthocyanins, and polyphenols. However, the direct use of the flower extract that contains so many pigments could reduce the capacity of the dye molecules to bind with TiO2 due to the aggregation of pigments. Calathea Kennedy extracts are also constrained by the binding affinity, so in our lab we separated it into four fractions using preparative thin-layer chromatography. The most polar layer (L3) was shown to have a 2.1 fold increase in efficiency compared to the raw extract, the highest Jsc of 4.75 mA/cm2, and the highest Voc of 5.93 volts. In summary, our study builds a relatively fast purification method to separate the raw natural dyes and provides a rapid approach to optimizing natural DSSC.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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