Energy harvested directly from sunlight offers a desirable approach toward fulfilling, with minimal environmental impact, the need for clean energy. Solar energy is a decentralized and inexhaustible natural resource, with the magnitude of the available solar power striking the earth’s surface at any one instant equal to 130 million 500 MW power plants.1 However, several important goals need to ...

MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 33 • JULY 2008 • www.mrs.org/bulletin Abstract Organic solar cells, based on polymer/fullerene-blend films, are advancing rapidly toward commercial viability. In this article, we review recent progress on two issues critical for technological applications: device photovoltaic efficiencies and processing technologies for high-throughput production. In terms of device effici...

With looming energy crisis across the globe, achieving high efficiency and low cost solar cells have long been the key objective for photovoltaic researchers. III-V compound semiconductor based multijunction solar cells have been the dominant choice for space power due to their superior performance compared to any other existing solar cell technologies. In spite of unmatched performance of III-...

Articles you may be interested in Quadruple-junction thin-film silicon-based solar cells with high open-circuit voltage Appl. Reduction of crosshatch roughness and threading dislocation density in metamorphic GaInP buffers and GaInAs solar cells Improved performance of In(Ga)As/GaAs quantum dot solar cells via light scattering by nanoparticles

Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is the only solar cell that can offer both the flexibility and transparency. Its efficiency is comparable to amorphous silicon solar cells but with a much lower cost. This review not only covers the fundamentals of DSSC but also the related cutting-edge research and its development for industrial applications. Most recent research topics on DSSC, for example, ap...

As a relatively new class of photovoltaic devices with a photoelectrochemical system consisting of a dye-sensitized semiconductor film and an electrolyte, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been regarded as a promising alternative to conventional solid-state semiconductor solar cells. They are relatively cost-effective, are easy to manufacture, and can be readily shaped with flexible subst...

Recent progress in the development of nanostructured inorganic solar cells is reviewed. Nanostructuring of inorganic solar cells offers the possibility of reducing the cost of photovoltaics by allowing smaller amounts of lowergrade photovoltaic semiconductors to be used. Various fabrication methods used to nanostructure traditional photovoltaic semiconductors are detailed and the performance of...

This project is a fundamental study into the development of low-cost, thin film solar cells. It explores the fabrication of semiconductor nanocomposites for photovoltaics using nanostructured inorganic materials and atomic layer deposition (ALD). In thin film technologies, there exists a common problem with conversion efficiency due to poor materials quality: the photogenerated electrons and ho...

Historically, conventional solar cells were built from inorganic materials such as silicon. Although the efficiency of such conventional solar cells is high, very expensive materials and energy intensive processing techniques are required. Hybrid and photoelectrochemical (dye sensitized) solar cells have been the cheap alternatives for conventional silicon solar cells. A hybrid solar cell consi...

The theoretical efficiency limit is calculated with some attention paid to the laws of physics ruling the limiting behavior of the system. Beginning with single gap solar cell systems, moving onward to tandem cells (solar cells containing several p-n junctions), and ending with solar cells with an intermediate energy band gap (created through an impurity in the system) progress towards maximum ...