Enhancement in the performance of nanostructured CuO–ZnO solar cells by band alignment

Abstract

Nanostructured ZnO/CuO photovoltaic cell with power conversion efficiency of 2.11%.

ZnO nanostructured materials for emerging solar cell applications

“…130 Cobalt doping was used in a band-alignment approach to optimize the performance of the CuO nanostructure and ZnO NRs solar cell, using a low-temperature chemical bath deposition technique (Table 4). 131 The device performances of a fully inorganic solar cell using ZnO are summarized in Table 4. With 10% cobalt doping, a PCE of 2.11% was obtained due to the lowered band-gap of the ZnO layer.…”

Photodetecting properties of single CuO–ZnO core–shell nanowires with p–n radial heterojunction

“…Copper oxide (CuO) is a p-type semiconductor with a narrow band gap in the range of 1.2–2.1 eV 23 , and high optical absorption in the visible range. It is also highly versatile and easy to prepare material, suitable for applications in field effect transistors 24 , photodetectors 25 , light emitting diodes 26 , solar cells 27 , photocatalysis 28 , etc. Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a n-type semiconductor with a wide band gap (3.37 eV), a 60 meV exciton binding energy 29 .…”

Zinc oxide heterostructures: advances in devices from self-powered photodetectors to self-charging supercapacitors

“…62 This concept of band alignment when applied to solar cells result in increasing of the power conversion efficiency. 59 A study by Kaphle et al, showed that the intrinsic band 12 alignment in a p-n junction solar cell of p-CuO/n-ZnO (Fig. 5(e)) can be effectively tuned via Co doping.…”