Above-11%-efficiency organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells with omnidirectional harvesting characteristics by employing hierarchical photon-trapping structures.

Hierarchical structures consisting of micropyramids and nanowires are used in Si/PEDOT:PSS hybrid solar cells to achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 11.48% with excellent omnidirectionality. The structure provides a combined concepts of superior light trapping ability, significant increase of p-n junction areas, and short carrier diffusion distance, improving the photovoltaic characteristics including short-circuit current density, fill factor, and PCE.

Single-crystalline zinc oxide nanowires as photoanode material for dye-sensitized solar cells.

This study reports the use of single-crystalline and well-aligned ZnO nanowires as photoanode material for dye-sensitized solar cells. The ZnO nanowires are grown on fluorine-doped tin oxide coated glass substrates without catalysts by thermal evaporation. In spite of low roughness factors of around 25 for the nanowire photoanodes, the fabricated solar cells yield power conversion efficiencies of around 1.

Materials, interfaces, and photon confinement in dye-sensitized solar cells.

A series of experiments have been carried out to study the effects of materials quality, surface and interfacial modification, and photon confinement on standard dye-sensitized solar cells. For these studies, both physical and optical characterization of the materials has been performed in detail. In addition, DC and AC impedance measurements along with kinetic charge-transport modeling of experimental results have yielded information on how to systematically optimize the cell efficiency.