Photoelectric conversion enhancement of Ag modified p-type Cu2O/n-type ZnO transparent heterojunction device

A transparent photovoltaic device of NiO/MgO quantum dots/TiO2 arrays pn junction with carrier injection of MgO QDs

“…Fig. S3 (ESI) is the I-V curve of as-prepared transparent NiO/MgO QDs/TiO 2 pn junction device (NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-2) in dark and illumination, as demonstrated, and this asprepared sample in dark exhibits a typical rectification and exhibits a shift down and higher response in illumination, which manifest that this as-prepared transparent device is a typical pn junction [10,11,18,37,39,40,60]. Additionally, more detailed performance would be evaluated as follows.…”

“…Further, with the introduction of MgO QDs, the corresponding photocurrents increase to about * 2.59 9 10 -6 A (NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-1), * 3.62 9 10 -5 A (NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-2), and then decrease to * 1.85 9 10 -5 A (NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-3), respectively. By calculation, the NiO/MgO QDs/ TiO 2 pn junction (NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-2) exhibits a remarkable photovoltaic enhancement of about * 3 9 10 2 folds than single NiO/TiO 2 pn junction and the PCE can reach to about * 1.18%, although the transmittance obtains a slight decrease, which is regarded as a decent result in current transparent device [11,18,[53][54][55]60], and indicates that the charge carrier injection and potential regulation of MgO QDs would play more important roles than the absorption. On the other hand, the photovoltaic conversion of NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-3 exhibits a decrease, which is ascribed to that the interface scattering caused by excess MgO QDs would break the optimal balance between charge carrier concentration and mobility.…”

“…7 (photovoltaic performance), the as-prepared NiO/MgO QDs/TiO 2 pn junction(NiO/TiO 2 -MgO-2) obtains an obvious photovoltaic enhancement of about 3 9 10 2 folds, but exhibits a weak transmittance decrease of less than 5%, which indicates that the charge carrier injection and potential transition of MgO would play important roles during the photovoltaic process [11], despite the excess MgO QDs would cause an increased interface scattering to decrease the photovoltaic performance. As designed, the introduced MgO QDs would not only act as a donor to increase charge carrier injection but also act as the stair to accelerate charge carrier transfer, which can improve the charge carrier efficiency to enhance photovoltaic conversion [18,60] and are proved by a series of electrochemical testing.…”

Numerical modeling and analysis of AZO/Cu2O transparent solar cell with a TiO2 buffer layer

“…Among these oxides, cuprous oxide (Cu 2 O) is considered as one of the most promising p-type semiconductor materials, particularly for photovoltaic applications, thanks to its native p-type semiconductivity, its high majority carrier mobility, and its optical transparency [4][5][6]. As a result, over the past decade, many Cu 2 O-based solar cells that incorporated various n-type semiconductors with large band gap energy, such as aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO), have been fabricated with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) between 0.24 % and 3.21 % [7][8][9][10][11]. Despite efforts to fabricate high-performance Cu 2 O/AZO heterojunction solar cells, the achieved efficiencies remain significantly lower than the theoretical limit of 20 %, based on the Cu 2 O band gap [12].…”