Search results for "Optoelectronics"
showing 10 items of 2306 documents
Donor–Acceptor Interfaces by Engineered Nanoparticles Assemblies for Enhanced Efficiency in Plastic Planar Heterojunction Solar Cells
2016
Precisely positioning functionalized gold nanoparticles assemblies at planar donor-acceptor interfaces results in 14-fold enhancement of power conversion efficiency in P3HT/PCBM organic solar cells on plastic (ITO/PET) substrates. This result has been achieved by employing naphthalenethiol-capped gold nanoparticles (NT-Au-NPs) produced by laser ablation in liquid and size varied in the 10-30 nm range. Upon surface functionalization with the aromatic thiol, these particles self-assemble in submicrometer aggregates, which give increased light scattering. When these aggregates are deposited in the planar heterojunction between the donor and the acceptor systems, the localized scattering leads …
Ultrafast spectroscopic investigation on fluorescent carbon nanodots: the role of passivation.
2019
Disentangling the respective roles of the surface and core structures in the photocycle of carbon nanodots is a critical open problem in carbon nanoscience. While the need of passivating carbon dot surfaces to obtain efficiently emitting nanoparticles is very well-known in the literature, it is unclear if passivation introduces entirely new surface emitting states, or if it stabilizes existing states making them fluorescent. In this multi-technique femtosecond spectroscopy study, the relaxation dynamics of non-luminescent (non-passivated) carbon dots are directly compared with their luminescent (passivated) counterparts. Non-passivated dots are found to host emissive states, albeit very sho…
Two birds with one stone: dual grain-boundary and interface passivation enables >22% efficient inverted methylammonium-free perovskite solar cells
2021
Advancing inverted (p���i���n) perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is key to further enhance the power conversion efficiency (PCE) and stability of flexible and perovskite-based tandem photovoltaics. Yet, the presence of defects at grain boundaries and in particular interfacial recombination at the perovskite/electron transporting layer interface induce severe non-radiative recombination losses, limiting the open-circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF) of PSCs in this architecture. In this work, we introduce a dual passivation strategy using the long chain alkylammonium salt phenethylammonium chloride (PEACl) both as an additive and for surface treatment to simultaneously passivate the grain b…
New process of silicon carbide purification intended for silicon passivation
2017
Abstract In this work, we report on a new, efficient and low cost process of silicon carbide (SiC) powder purification intended to be used in photovoltaic applications. This process consists on the preparation of porous silicon carbide layers followed by a photo-thermal annealing under oxygen atmosphere and chemical treatment. The effect of etching time on impurities removal efficiency was studied. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) results showed that the best result was achieved for an etching time of 10 min followed by gettering at 900 °C during 1 h. SiC purity is improved from 3N (99.9771%) to 4N (99.9946%). Silicon carbide thin films were deposited onto s…
HCl gas gettering for crystalline silicon thin film solar cells
2011
Crystalline silicon thin film (cSiTF) solar cells could be an attractive alternative for standard silicon solar cells. Only a small amount of the expensive high purity silicon is needed for the epitaxial deposition on a low-cost silicon substrate made from e.g. metallurgical grade (MG) or upgraded metallurgical grade (UMG) silicon. The resulting product is called epitaxial wafer equivalent (EpiWE) because it can be processed in a standard wafer cell production. MG-Si and UMG-Si still contain a huge amount of metallic impurities. These impurities have to be removed by gettering methods in order to prevent diffusion into the highly pure active silicon layer during the high-temperature deposit…
Minority Carrier Lifetime Variations in Multicrystalline Silicon Wafers with Temperature and Ingot Position
2017
The minority carrier lifetimes of multicrystalline silicon wafers are mapped using microwave photoconductive decay for different temperatures and ingot positions. Wafers from the top of the ingot display larger areas with lower lifetimes compared to wafers from the bottom. The lifetimes of low-lifetime areas are found to increase with the temperature, while the lifetimes of some high-lifetime areas decrease or remain unchanged. The relative improvement of the low-lifetime areas is considerably larger than the relative change in the high-lifetime areas. We suggest that the above-mentioned observations explain, at least partially, why previous studies have found the relative temperature coeff…
Temperature Sensitivity of Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells
2019
This paper presents an experimental investigation of the temperature coefficients of multicrystalline silicon solar cells. The aim was to determine if some cell parameters can affect positively the temperature sensitivity without detrimental impact on the efficiency. Commercial solar cells with different bulk resistivities, compensation levels, and cell architectures have been studied. We report that the base net doping, the location of the solar cell along the brick and the cell architecture have significant impacts on the temperature coefficients. Moreover, we show how the change in recombination mechanisms along the ingot height affects the temperature coefficients. The compensation leve…
Improved stability of black silicon detectors using aluminum oxide surface passivation
2021
Publisher Copyright: © 2021 ESA and CNES We have studied how high-energy electron irradiation (12 MeV, total dose 66 krad(Si)) and long term humidity exposure (75%, 75 °C, 500 hours) influence the induced junction black silicon or planar photodiode characteristics. In our case, the induced junction is formed using n-type silicon and atomic-layer deposited aluminum oxide (Al2O3), which contains a large negative fixed charge. We compare the results with corresponding planar pn-junction detectors passivated with either with silicon dioxide (SiO2) or Al2O3. The results show that the induced junction detectors remain stable as their responsivity remains nearly unaffected during the electron beam…
Anisotropic optical response of GaN and AlN nanowires.
2012
We present a theoretical study of the electronic structure and optical properties of free-standing GaN and AlN nanowires. We have implemented the empirical tight-binding method, with an orbital basis sp(3), that includes the spin-orbit interaction. The passivation of the dangling bonds at the free surfaces is also studied, together with the effects on the electronic structure of the nanowire. For both GaN and AlN nanowires, we have found a remarkable anisotropy of the optical absorption when the light-polarization changes, showing in the case of GaN a dependence on the nanowire size.
Reduced Recombination Losses in Evaporated Perovskite Solar Cells by Postfabrication Treatment
2021
The photovoltaic perovskite research community has now developed a large set of tools and techniques to improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE). One such arcane trick is to allow the finished devices to dwell in time, and the PCE often improves. Herein, a mild postannealing procedure is implemented on coevaporated perovskite solar cells confirming a substantial PCE improvement, mainly attributed to an increased open-circuit voltage (V\(_{OC}\)). From a V\(_{OC}\) of around 1.11 V directly after preparation, the voltage improves to more than 1.18 V by temporal and thermal annealing. To clarify the origin of this annealing effect, an in-depth device experimental and simulation character…