Applications of ZnSe quantum dots for solar energy harvesting

Abstract

To reduce the large usage of fossil fuels, scholars have made great efforts to develop green energy such as wind energy, biomass energy, and solar energy. Solar energy has special benefits, thus solar energy harvesting technologies including solar cells, luminescent solar concentrators, photocatalysis have been studied widely. It is meaningful to study the working principle of those technologies. For the special properties of ZnSe, different kinds of nanostructure of it have been used for solar energy harvesting. Among them, since quantum qot structure has some specific characters, the application of it for solar energy harvesting are worthwhile to mention. This study aims to introduce solar cells, luminescent solar concentrators, photocatalysis technologies and the applications of ZnSe quantum dots for them. It found that ZnSe quantum dots enhanced the behavior of Si nanowire solar cells. Besides, the outstanding performance of luminescent solar concentrators based on InP/ZnSe quantum dots is partly own to ZnSe shell structure. Moreover, some quantum dots including ZnSe shell structure behave good photocatalytic H2 evolution performances. At the same time, the nanostructures of the quantum dots mentioned are shown.