Here we report on a novel substrate, nanopaper, made of cellulose nanofibrils, an earth abundant material.Compared with regular paper substrates, nanopaper shows superior optical properties. We have carried out the first study on the optical properties of nanopaper substrates. Since the size of the nanofibrils is much less than the wavelength of visible light, nanopaper is highly transparent with large light scattering in the forward direction. Successful depositions of transparent and conductive materials including tin-doped indium oxide, carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires have been achieved on nanopaper substrates, opening up a wide range of applications in optoelectronics such as displays, touch screens and interactive paper. We have also successfully demonstrated an organic solar cell on the novel substrate. Broader contextWood ber cellulose has been used for more than 2000 years as an ingredient for making paper. The cellulose paper that we see in our everyday lives consists of bers with diameters of tens of micrometers. Using chemical or enzymatic pretreatments followed by high-pressure homogenization, the micrometer-sized cellulose bers can be disintegrated into nanobrillated cellulose (NFC) with a diameter of around 10-20 nm and a length of 2 mm. By compressing the NFC pulp with the right composition in a sheet-former, highly transparent nanocellulose paper can be produced. The nanocellulose paper has large light scattering in the forward direction, which is very useful for solar cell applications. The nanocellulose paper can be coated with a wide variety of conductive materials, such as carbon nanotubes, silver nanowires and tin-doped indium oxide (ITO), to produce transparent conductive paper. By depositing a thin layer of ITO, the conductive nanocellulose paper can be used as a substrate for making organic solar cells.

We synthesized wurtzite CuInS(2) nanorods (NRs) by colloidal solution-phase growth. We discovered that the growth process starts with nucleation of Cu(2)S nanodisks, followed by epitaxial overgrowth of CuInS(2) NRs onto only one face of Cu(2)S nanodisks, resulting in biphasic Cu(2)S-CISu heterostructured NRs. The phase transformation of biphasic Cu(2)S-CuInS(2) into monophasic CuInS(2) NRs occurred with growth progression. The observed epitaxial overgrowth and phase transformation is facile for three reasons. First, the sharing of the sulfur sublattice by the hexagonal chalcocite Cu(2)S and wurtzite CuInS(2) minimizes the lattice distortion. Second, Cu(2)S is in a superionic conducting state at the growth temperature of 250 degrees C wherein the copper ions move fluidly. Third, the size of the Cu(2)S nanodisks is small, resulting in fast phase transformation. Our results provide valuable insight into the controlled solution growth of ternary chalcogenide nanoparticles and will aid in the development of solar cells using ternary I-III-VI(2) semiconductors.

Silicon has been driving the great success of semiconductor industry, and emerging forms of silicon have generated new opportunities in electronics, biotechnology, and energy applications. Here we demonstrate large-area free-standing ultrathin single-crystalline Si at the wafer scale as new Si materials with processability. We fabricated them by KOH etching of the Si wafer and show their uniform thickness from 10 to sub-2 μm. These ultrathin Si exhibits excellent mechanical flexibility and bendability more than those with 20-30 μm thickness in previous study. Unexpectedly, these ultrathin Si materials can be cut with scissors like a piece of paper, and they are robust during various regular fabrication processings including tweezer handling, spin coating, patterning, doping, wet and dry etching, annealing, and metal deposition. We demonstrate the fabrication of planar and double-sided nanocone solar cells and highlight that the processability on both sides of surface together with the interesting property of these free-standing ultrathin Si materials opens up exciting opportunities to generate novel functional devices different from the existing approaches.

Solution-based deposition techniques are widely considered to be a route to low-cost, high-throughput photovoltaic device fabrication. In this report, we establish a methodology for a highly scalable deposition process and report the synthesis of an air-stable, vulcanized ink from commercially available precursors. Using our air-stable ink rolling (AIR) process, we can make solar cells with an absorber layer that is flat, contaminant-free, and composed of large-grained CuInS(2). The current-voltage characteristics of the devices were measured in the dark and under 100 mW/cm(2) illumination intensity, and the devices were found to have J(sc) = 18.49 mA/cm(2), V(oc) = 320 mV, FF = 0.37, and eta = 2.15%. This process has the ability to produce flat, contaminant-free, large-grained films similar to those produced by vacuum deposition, and its versatility should make it capable of producing a variety of materials for electronic, optoelectronic, and memory devices.