Research Achievement Hybrid solar cells have been developed in the past decade as a promising alternative for traditional silicon-based solar cells. One approach for making inexpensive inorganic-organic hybrid photovoltaic (PV) cells is to fill nanostructured titania films with solid organic hole conductors such as conjugated polymers. These compounds can function as light-absorbing species and...

Light confinement strategies in thin film silicon solar cells play a crucial role in the performance of the devices. In this work, the possible use of Ag coated stamped polymers as reflectors to be used in n-i-p solar cells is studied. Different random roughnesses (nanometer and micrometer size) have been transferred on poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) by hot embossing. Morphological and optical...

A nano-grid structure of perovskite SrTiO3 NWs is developed for a novel electron transport layer in inverted polymer solar cells. Due to the excellent charge transporting properties of the SrTiO3 nano-grid structure, the device employing this nanostructure showed ∼32% enhanced photovoltaic performance, compared to the solar cell using a TiO2 thin film.

A new copolymer of dithienosilole (DTS) and dithienyl-s-tetrazine (TTz), PDTSTTz, has been designed and synthesized. This solution processable polymer shows a low band gap, strong absorption and good thermal stability. Solar cells from the blend of this polymer with PC(71)BM showed power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 4.2%.

A highly crystalline and low bandgap donor polymer, EI-PFDTBT, is developed by inserting ethylene bridging units to ensure a coplanar configuration between the side chains and the main chain. Polymer solar cells based on the EI-PFDTBT and PC(71) BM blends spincoated at elevated temperatures exhibit a power conversion efficiency of 5.1%.

An ionic liquid polymer, poly (1-alkyl-3-(acryloyloxy)hexylimidazolium iodide), was employed as an iodine-free electrolyte in all-solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells with an overall conversion efficiency of 5.29% under AM 1.5 simulated solar light (100 mW cm(-2)) illumination.

Dye-sensitized nanocrystalline solar cells (DSC) have received considerable attention as a cost-effective alternative to conventional solar cells. One of the main factors that has hampered widespread practical use of DSC is the poor thermostability encountered so far with these devices. Here we show a DSC with unprecedented stable performance under both thermal stress and soaking with light, ma...

Novel birefringent liquid crystal polymer homeotropic films have been coated on semiconductor solar cells to improve the effective incident sunlight angles. The liquid crystal polymer precursor, based on reactive mesogens, is fluidic and flows like liquid. It would distribute uniformly on the solar cell sample surface by any traditional coating technique. The birefringence for light, due to the...

nanostructures of noble metal materials have been used in organic solar cells for enhancement of performance and light trapping. in this study, we have introduced branched silver cauliflower-like nanopatterns as sub-wavelength structured metal grating in organic solar cells. self-assembled fabrication process of branched nanopatterns was carried out on a bio-template of cicada wing nanonipple a...