Improved Utilization of Sunlight Through the Incidence Dependence of the Photonic Stop Band: A g‐C₃N₄‐Embedded Fluorine‐Doped Tin Oxide (FTO) Photonic Crystal Film

Abstract

Photonic crystal fluorine‐doped tin oxide (PC‐FTO) films are fabricated on FTO glass to supply an available surface area to embed a photoactive material, and also improve the overall photon–electron conversion efficiency under illumination with light of a specific incident range. The nanoscale g‐C3N4 photocatalyst is synthesized directly inside the PC‐FTO film from a liquid precursor, without the addition of any surface reagent or noble metal particles. The photonic stop band (PSB) of the PC‐FTO is studied by diffuse‐reflectance UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy (DRUVS) under conditions of a different incidence angle of the light. Photoelectrochemistry (PEC) is used to demonstrate the influence of the PSB on the photocatalytic performance of g‐C3N4@PC‐FTO.

Integrating Low-Stack Photonic Crystals with the Honeycomb-like Structural Framework to Enhance the Photovoltaic Performance in Perovskite Solar Cells

“…This increases the absorption of visible light by the solar cells. Second, the framework has a macroporous structure that provides a surface area approximately 3 times larger than flat SnO 2 . This, combined with the separated honeycomb structured cell, is the third benefit; the honeycomb structure creates parallel conductive pathways, which enhances the efficiency of carrier transport.…”

“…Second, the framework has a macroporous structure that provides a surface area approximately 3 times larger than flat SnO 2 . 17 This, combined with the separated honeycomb structured cell, is the third benefit; the honeycomb structure creates parallel conductive pathways, which enhances the efficiency of carrier transport. Both mechanisms from optic properties and the porous morphology together contributed to enhanced J SC , and the sole characters of the porous morphology mainly contributed to the slightly increased FF as the framework facilitates faster extraction of photogenerated electrons from the perovskite interface, thus reducing the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes.…”

“…15 Second, by controlling the thickness of the inverse skeletons to several tens of nanometers, the embedded perovskite materials in the separated honeycomb structured cells form parallel conductive pathways, increasing the efficiency of carrier transport. 16 Third, the one-layered inverse opal structure exhibits a semiphotonic crystal structure, further enhancing sunlight absorption 17 and increasing the short-circuit density to some extent. Therefore, a systematic investigation was conducted by using different structural building blocks of SnO 2 frameworks with varying diameters based on polystyrene (PS) microspheres.…”

Incidence Dependency of Photonic Crystal Substrate and Its Application on Solar Energy Conversion: Ag2S Sensitized WO3 in FTO Photonic Crystal Film

“…However, the varied periodic order of WO 3 PCs would not only change the PSB but also suggest a different surface area and reaction sites for the embedded photoactive materials, which make it less convenient to study the photonic effect on photocatalysis. In our recent report [26], g-C 3 N 4 as the photoactive material was embedded in an FTO PCs film, overlapped the PSB of FTO PCs film and absorption range of g-C 3 N 4 was achieved by tuning the position of the PSB through controlling incidences. An alternative approach to fit the PSB and absorption range of photoactive materials is tuning the absorption of photoactive materials by adding dyes.…”

Optimized Overall Photoactivity of WO3: Utilization of Incidence Dependence from Photonic Crystal Substrate

“…And only the incident light angle is changeable in practical use for a given based system, while the filling factor, periodicity order and material of PCs were settled. Hence the artful using of the incident light angle and combination of PCs and photoactive material can effectively improves the utilization of actual light source, and the work of g‐C 3 N 4 @PC‐FTO electrode with different incident angle of light for improving the utilization of solar light has been done in before . Of direct relevance to this work, multiple layered macroporous FTO coated was coated with WO 3 film via electrodeposition.…”