Prihanto Trihutomo
Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) belong to a more recent generation of solar technologies that do not rely on silicon, thus are cheaper and environmentally friendly compared with regular photovoltaic systems. Despite the organic dyes furnish good efficiency yet, their utility for DSSC fabrications has been constricted by their expensive synthesis cost, availability and environmental constraints. To solve the problem, this work investigates cherry leaves organic dye material as a novel natural and cheap renewable dyestuff. Distilled water, methanol, ethanol and acetone were applied to extract the pigment compounds from the leaves. The extracts were further investigated by UV-Vis spectrophotometry for the light absorption profile, FTIR spectroscopy for the identification of functional groups that can interact with TiO2 and a solar simulator to evaluate the overall performance of cells. In the samples, acetone was extracted with the highest absorbance of 3.5022 a.u. and best efficiency is 0.0439% then followed by methanol (0.0329%), ethanol (0.0133%) and distilled water (0.0058%). The FTIR results indicated that the dye contained O–H, C–H alkane, C=O and C=C alkene groups those were transferred electron at interfaces through (acetone) as a ligand moiety with ordered sequence of maximal enhancement by –OH and carbonyl group attached among sight reactive functional group. These findings indicate that the cherry leaf extract, especially the acetone fraction, has desirable chemical and optical properties which can enhance DSSC performance. In short, this work demonstrated the potential of using the cherry leaves for dye sensitizer of solar cell as a sustainable, low cost dye source and extended it to other plant materials towards greener creativity in energy. © The Author(s) 2026.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, State University of Malang, 5 Semarang str., Malang, 65145, Indonesia
