Recent Developments and Emerging Opportunities for Biomass Derived Carbon Materials in Dye Sensitized Solar Energy Conversion

Abstract

To meet the ever-increasing demand for solar energy conversion, the exploration of new materials that improve energy and cost efficiency is great significance. Particularly in dye-sensitized solar cells, extensive efforts have been made to substitute the traditional metal-based components with various carbon materials. As the result, carbon materials such as carbon dots, carbon nanotubes, grapheme, and porous carbon materials are explored for their components, which are traditionally derived from fossil resources. Recently these carbon materials are widely synthesized or derived from renewable biomasses and getting important in solar energy conversion due to their similar structural, physicochemical, morphological, and functional features of above stated traditional carbon materials. The utilization of these biocarbon materials offers numerous environmental and economic benefits over traditional carbon materials and creates a new pathway towards a sustainable future. Thus, this review summarizes the recent exploration of biocarbon materials in dye-sensitized solar cells and discusses their emerging opportunities.