All-inorganic spin-cast nanoparticle solar cells with nonselective electrodes

Abstract

Spin-cast all-inorganic nanoparticle solutions have been used to make a CdTe/CdSe solar cell with an efficiency of up to 2.6% using air stable electrodes and without an additional alumina layer. The type of junction as well as the nonselective nature of the electrodes of these devices are explored.

Solar cell interface stability probed by charge extraction

“…The CdCl 2 treatment is well-documented [2] and facilitates grain growth in the CdTe film. The nanoparticle film is then sintered at 400 o C to form a uniform thin film ~200 nm thick [3]. Efficiencies as high as 5% have been achieved with this very simple solution-based fabrication technique.…”

Building Solar Cells from Nanocrystal Inks

“…The drawback of this method is that the increased stresses that develop during the annealing step may cause the formation of cracks, voids, and/or holes in the NC film, which will lead to device shunt or weaken in performance. Furthermore, the bulk defects in the CdTe NC thin film limit carrier transfer, and the solar cell PCEs are usually below 3% [23,24]. Recently, a layer-by-layer approach was adopted to overcome this problem [25,26].…”

Multifunctional inorganic/organic hybrid microgels

“…Also, upscaling of synthesis protocols and green chemistry approaches became more and more important especially with respect to their potential application in a variety of fields. Nanoparticles are, for example, employed in applications comprising sensing [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], catalysis [14][15][16][17], light emitting diodes [18][19][20][21][22][23], and solar cell fabrication [18,[24][25][26]. Not at least for application purposes, nanoparticle stability plays a major role.…”