Search results for " solar cell"
showing 10 items of 309 documents
Injection and ultrafast regeneration in dye-sensitized solar cells
2014
Injection of an electron from the excited dye molecule to the semiconductor is the initial charge separation step in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC's). Though the dynamics of the forward injection process has been widely studied, the results reported so far are controversial, especially for complete DSC's. In this work, the electron injection in titanium dioxide (TiO2) films sensitized with ruthenium bipyridyl dyes N3 and N719 was studied both in neat solvent and in a typical iodide/triiodide (I-/I3 -) DSC electrolyte. Transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy was used to monitor both the formation of the oxidized dye and the arrival of injected electrons to the conduction band of TiO2. Emiss…
Study of the P3HT/PCBM interface using photoemission yield spectroscopy
2016
Photogeneration efficiency and charge carrier extraction from active layer are the parameters that determine the efficiency of organic photovoltaics (OPVs). Devices made of organic materials often consist of thin (up to 100nm) layers. At this thickness different interface effects become more pronounced. The electron affinity and ionization energy shift can affect the charge carrier transport across metal-organic interface which can affect the performance of the entire device. In the case of multilayer OPVs, energy level compatibility at the organic-organic interface is as important. Photoemission yield spectroscopy was used for organic-organic interface study by ionization energy measuremen…
Reducing the Schottky barrier height at the MoSe2/Mo(110) interface in thin-film solar cells: Insights from first-principles calculations
2016
Abstract We report on first-principles calculations of the properties of the MoSe2/Mo(110) interface. Due to mismatch between the lattice parameters of the two structures, different patterns can form at the interface. We have studied the formation energy and the band alignment of six patterns for the MoSe2 (0001)/Mo(110) interface and one pattern for the MoSe2 (11 2 0)/Mo(110) interface. The MoSe2 (11 2 0)/Mo(110) interface is more stable than the MoSe 2 (0001)/Mo(110) interface and in contrast to MoSe2 (0001)/Mo(110), no Schottky barrier forms at MoSe2 (11 2 0)/Mo(110). Doping with Na modifies the band alignment at the interfaces. The Schottky barrier height decreases, provided that a Na a…
Analytic $JV$ -Characteristics of Ideal Intermediate Band Solar Cells and Solar Cells With Up and Downconverters
2017
The ideal diode equation is regularly used to describe the $\textit {JV}$ -characteristic of single junction solar cells. The connection between the diode equation and fundamental physics is the application of the Boltzmann approximation to describe the fluxes of photons emitted by the cell. In this paper, this approximation is used to derive analytic $\textit {JV}$ -characteristics for three photovoltaic high-efficiency concepts, intermediate band solar cells, and solar cells optically coupled to up and downconverters. These three concepts share the common feature that they allow excitation of electrons between at least three energy levels, which assures a better utilization of the solar s…
Modelling chemical composition in electric systems - implications to the dynamics of dye-sensitised solar cells
2010
International audience; Classical electromagnetism provides limited means to model electric generators. To extend the classical theory in this respect, additional information on microscopic processes is required. In semiconductor devices and electrochemical generators such information may be obtained by modelling chemical composition. Here we use this approach for the modelling of dye-sensitised solar cells. We simulate the steady-state current-voltage characteristics of such a cell, as well as its transient response. Dynamic simulations show optoelectronic hysteresis in these cells under transient light pulse illumination.
Impact of hydroxy and octyloxy substituents of phenothiazine based dyes on the photovoltaic performance
2013
Two novel organic dyes containing hydroxy and octyloxy substituents onto a phenothiazine skeleton were synthesized and their effects on the photovoltaic performance were studied. Hydroxy acts as an ancillary anchoring unit along with the carboxylic group, while the phenothiazine modified moiety acts as an electron donor. The photophysical and electrochemical studies revealed that maximum absorbance of the dye with the hydroxy group in the solution was blue shifted and its band gap increased, indicating that donor acceptor strength was reduced as compared to the octyloxy substituted dye. Furthermore, electron lifetime of the organic dye with the hydroxy moiety was shorter due to smaller resi…
Synthesis and photovoltaic performance of dihydrodibenzoazepine-based sensitizers with additional lateral anchor
2013
Three novel metal-free organic dyes with dihydro-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepine as a donor and cyanoacrylic acid as an anchoring unit were designed as an innovative linear skeleton of D-D-pi-A type of organic dyes. The conversion efficiency of the derived dye-sensitized solar cells is moderate. Among them, the dye with a hydroxy group as an additional anchoring moiety exhibited the highest UV-Vis absorption with a maximum molar extinction coefficient of 24,136 M-1 cm(-1) at lambda(max) = 458 nm and the best photovoltaic performance with an overall power conversion efficiency of 4.88%, while the dye with a carboxy group as an additional anchoring moiety exhibited the lowest conversion efficiency (4.…
Regio(ir)regular naphthalenediimide- and perylenediimide-bithiophene copolymers: How MO localization controls the bandgap
2016
Absorption spectra of regio(ir)regular naphthalenediimide (NDI)- and perylenediimide (PDI)-bithiophene (2T) donor/acceptor (D/A) copolymers are surprisingly similar despite cross-conjugation in the regioirregular structures. This result is traced back to largely localized frontier molecular orbitals (FMOs) as revealed by (time-dependent) DFT calculations. Interestingly, while the FMOs of the P(PDI-2T) copolymer are localized solely in the PDI units, they are predominantly localized in the respective D/A units of the P(NDI-2T) copolymer. The pronounced CT character of the lowest singlet state in P(NDI-2T) should give rise to a close lying CT triplet state, generating small singlet–triplet ga…
A procedure to evaluate the seven parameters of the two-diode model for photovoltaic modules
2019
Abstract The paper presents an analytical procedure to calculate the seven parameters of the two-diode model of photovoltaic (PV) panels for any value of the solar irradiance and cell temperature. Six parameters (the photocurrent, the diode reverse saturation currents, the quality factor of the first diode and the series and shunt resistances), are evaluated by solving the equations related to the properties of the main points of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. The further information, necessary to calculate the entire set of seven truly independent parameters, is based on two conditions that have to be simultaneously satisfied: 1) the exclusion of negative values of the model pa…
Plasmonic and diffractive nanostructures for light trapping—an experimental comparison
2015
Metal nanoparticles and diffractive nanostructures are widely studied for enhancing light trapping efficiency in thin-film solar cells. Both have achieved high performance enhancements, but there are very few direct comparisons between the two. Also, it is difficult to accurately determine the parasitic absorption of metal nanoparticles. Here, we assess the light trapping efficiencies of both approaches in an identical absorber configuration. We use a 240 nm thick amorphous silicon slab as the absorber layer and either a quasi-random supercell diffractive nanostructure or a layer of self-assembled metal nanoparticles for light trapping. Both the plasmonic and diffractive structures strongly…