When CdTe solar cells are doped with Cl, the grain boundaries no longer act as recombination centers but actively contribute to carrier collection efficiency. The physical origin of this remarkable effect has been determined through a combination of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and first-principles theory. Cl substitutes for a large proportion of the Te atoms within a few unit cells of the grain boundaries. Density functional calculations reveal the mechanism, and further indicate the grain boundaries are inverted to n type, establishing local p-n junctions which assist electron-hole pair separation. The mechanism is electrostatic, and hence independent of the geometry of the boundary, thereby explaining the universally high collection efficiency of Cl-doped CdTe solar cells.

Optimization of internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for InGaN quantum wells (QWs) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is investigated. Staggered InGaN QWs with large electron-hole wavefunction overlap and improved radiative recombination rate are investigated for nitride LEDs application. The effect of interface abruptness in staggered InGaN QWs on radiative recombination rate is studied. Studies show that the less interface abruptness between the InGaN sub-layers will not affect the performance of the staggered InGaN QWs detrimentally. The growths of linearly-shaped staggered InGaN QWs by employing graded growth temperature grading are presented. The effect of current injection efficiency on IQE of InGaN QWs LEDs and other approaches to reduce dislocation in InGaN QWs LEDs are also discussed. The optimization of both radiative efficiency and current injection efficiency in InGaN QWs LEDs are required for achieving high IQE devices emitting in the green spectral regime and longer.

Imperfections in organometal halide perovskite films such as grain boundaries (GBs), defects, and traps detrimentally cause significant nonradiative recombination energy loss and decreased power conversion efficiency (PCE) in solar cells. Here, a simple layer-by-layer fabrication process based on air exposure followed by thermal annealing is reported to grow perovskite films with large, single-crystal grains and vertically oriented GBs. The hole-transport medium Spiro-OMeTAD is then infiltrated into the GBs to form vertically aligned bulk heterojunctions. Due to the space-charge regions in the vicinity of GBs, the nonradiative recombination in GBs is significantly suppressed. The GBs become active carrier collection channels. Thus, the internal quantum efficiencies of the devices approach 100% in the visible spectrum range. The optimized cells yield an average PCE of 16.3 ± 0.9%, comparable to the best solution-processed perovskite devices, establishing them as important alternatives to growing ideal single crystal thin films in the pursuit toward theoretical maximum PCE with industrially realistic processing techniques.