Optical dispersion and photovoltaic performance of safranin thin films solar cells in hybrid organic-inorganic isotype heterojunction configuration

• Nanostructured safranin O films are successfully deposited. • SO films showed high UV-Vis-NIR absorption. • Linear and nonlinear optical properties of SO films are evaluated. • The SO / p -Si achieved remarkably high photoresponse. • The designed device recorded photovoltaic performance with PCE ∼ 5.2 %. This paper introduces detailed evaluations of the structural and optical properties of thermally evaporated safranin O ( SO ) thin films to fabricate a hybrid organic-inorganic isotype heterojunction solar cell. The structural investigations revealed the polycrystalline nature of films with a smooth homogeneous nanorods-based surface. The measured transmittance, reflectance, and absorbance showed that the deposited film exhibits high absorption features with an energy gap of about 2.21 eV. Moreover, the analyzed dispersion behavior is interpreted in the light of the one-oscillator model, estimating all dispersion parameters and the electronic polarizability. The electrical properties of Ag/ SO / p -Si/Al isotype heterojunction are investigated under dark and illumination. The ideality factor, rectification ratio, reverse saturation current, the barrier height of the engineered heterojunction are extracted. Furthermore, the photovoltaic characteristics are tested under different light intensities, and the current design achieved superior performance with V oc , J sc , and PCE of about 0.803 volts, 8.898 mA/cm 2 5.2 %, respectively.