Search results for "photovoltaic"
showing 10 items of 646 documents
Wide range local resistance imaging on fragile materials by conducting probe atomic force microscopy in intermittent contact mode
2016
International audience; An imaging technique associating a slowly intermittent contact mode of atomic force microscopy (AFM) with a home-made multi-purpose resistance sensing device is presented. It aims at extending the widespread resistance measurements classically operated in contact mode AFM to broaden their application fields to soft materials (molecular electronics, biology) and fragile or weakly anchored nano-objects, for which nanoscale electrical characterization is highly demanded and often proves to be a challenging task in contact mode. Compared with the state of the art concerning less aggressive solutions for AFM electrical imaging, our technique brings a significantly wider r…
Energy and charge transfer in nanoscale hybrid materials.
2015
Hybrid materials composed of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots and π-conjugated organic molecules and polymers have attracted continuous interest in recent years, because they may find applications in bio-sensing, photodetection, and photovoltaics. Fundamental processes occurring in these nanohybrids are light absorption and emission as well as energy and/or charge transfer between the components. For future applications it is mandatory to understand, control, and optimize the wide parameter space with respect to chemical assembly and the desired photophysical properties. Accordingly, different approaches to tackle this issue are described here. Simple organic dye molecules (Dye)/quantum…
Enhancement of photoconversion efficiency in dye-sensitized solar cells exploiting pulsed laser deposited niobium pentoxide blocking layers
2015
Abstract Among all the photovoltaic technologies developed so far, dye-sensitized solar cells are considered as a promising alternative to the expensive and environmentally unfriendly crystalline silicon-based solar cells. One of the possible strategies employed to increase their photovoltaic efficiency is to reduce the charge recombination at the cell conductive substrate through the use of a compact blocking layer. In this paper, we report on the fabrication and characterization of dye-sensitized solar cells employing niobium pentoxide (Nb 2 O 5 ) thin film blocking layer deposited through the pulsed laser deposition technique on conductive substrates. The careful selection of the optimal…
3D photonic crystal intermediate reflectors for enhanced light-trapping in tandem solar cells
2012
The concept of 3D photonic crystals embedded in tandem solar cells as intermediate reflective layers is investigated. Numerical as well as experimental results will be presented.
A bacteriochlorin-diketopyrrolopyrrole triad as a donor for solution-processed bulk heterojunction organic solar cells
2019
We have designed an A–π–D–π–A small-molecule triad consisting of a bacteriochlorin (BC) donor central core linked with two diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) acceptors via ethynyl bridges (BC-DPP-1). BC-DPP-1 has a narrow optical bandgap of 1.38 eV with highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels of −4.93 eV and −3.40 eV, respectively, and it was used as an electron donor along with [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) as an acceptor for solution-processed small-molecule organic solar cells. After optimizing the weight ratio between BC-DPP-1 and PC71BM and pyridine as a solvent additive and subsequent solvent vapor annealing using THF, an …
Donor/Acceptor Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells
2020
The operation and the design of organic solar cells with donor/acceptor heterojunction structure and exciton blocking layer is outlined and results of their initial development and assessment are reported. Under halogen lamp illumination with 100 mW/cm2 incident optical power density, the devices exhibits an open circuit voltage VOC = 0.45 V, a short circuit current density JSC between 2 and 2.5 mA/cm2 with a fill factor FF &asymp
Porphyrins and BODIPY as Building Blocks for Efficient Donor Materials in Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
2017
International audience; Advances in the synthesis and application of highly efficient polymers and small molecules over the last two decades have enabled the rapid advancement in the development of organic solar cells and photovoltaic technology as a promising alternative to conventional solar cells, based on silicon and other inorganic semiconducting materials. Among the different types of organic semiconducting materials, porphyrins and BODIPY-based small molecules and conjugated polymers attract high interest as efficient semiconducting organic materials for dye sensitized solar cells and bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. The highest power conversion efficiency exceeding 9% has be…
Ionic Space-Charge Effects in Solid State Organic Photovoltaics
2010
The effect of mobile ions on the operation of donor-acceptor bilayer solar cells is studied. We demonstrate the large effect ions can have on the energetics of the solar cells, illustrated by (for instance) changing the output voltage of a cell in situ from 0.35 to 0.74 V. More importantly, it is shown ionic species do not obstruct the charge generating properties of the photovoltaic devices and ionic space charge can be used in situ to improve their efficiencies. The results obtained are explained by taking into account energetic changes at the donor-acceptor interface as well as built-in potentials, giving clear guidelines on how ionic species can offer many new and exciting functionaliti…
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 …
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…