Temperature-Stable and Optically Transparent Thin-Film Zinc Oxide Aerogel Electrodes As Model Systems for 3D Interpenetrating Organic–Inorganic Heterojunction Solar Cells

Abstract

Novel, nanostructured electrode materials comprising porous ZnO films with aerogel morphology are presented. Almost any substrate including polymers, metals, or ceramics can be coated using a method that is suitable for mass production. The thin, porous films can be prepared from the wet gels via conventional drying, supercritical drying is not necessary. The filigree ZnO network is thermally very stable and exhibits sufficient electrical conductivity for advanced electronic applications. The latter was tested by realizing a highly desired architecture of organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells. After sensitizing of the ZnO with a purely organic squarine dye (SQ2), a nanostructured, interpenetrating 3D network of the inorganic semiconductor (ZnO) and organic semiconductor (P3HT) was prepared. The solar cell device was tested under illumination with AM 1.5G solar light (100 mW/cm(2)) and exhibited an energy conversion efficiency (η(eff)) of 0.69%.

“Dirty nanostructures”: aerosol-assisted synthesis of temperature stable mesoporous metal oxide semiconductor spheres comprising hierarchically assembled zinc oxide nanocrystals controlled via impurities

“…The liquid methylzinc methoxyethoxide tetramer with heterocubane structure ([MeZnOEtOMe] 4 ) (1) was used as a single-source precursor for ZnO. 14,24,25,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] It is known that this compound provides ZnO either via thermal decomposition, 25,[63][64][65][66] or using sol-gel methodology (hydrolysis and polycondensation). 57,58,60,61,67 The precursors used for the introduction of E ¼ S or Al should preferably pursue similar (thermal) reaction pathways in the gas-phase.…”

Review of GaN/ZnO Hybrid Structures Based Materials and Devices

“…the high photoluminescence (PL) yield across the visible spectrum [93]. The organic and the inorganic hybrid system has been developed to provide a potential platform for the optoelectronic applications, such as tunable photodiodes [94], transparent coatings for short wavelength shielding [95], light up conversion devices [96], hybrid SCs [97][98][99]. On the other hand, the organic semiconductors have excellent luminescence properties with a greater variety of emission wavelengths, significantly higher PL efficiencies and potential for stable p-type electrodes; however, they exhibit inferior electrical behaviors [85,100,101].…”

Hybrid Organic/Inorganic Nanocomposites for Photovoltaic Cells

“…Among them, the nanoporous structure (Figure 2d) is of great interest, and many attempts have been made based on porous inorganic semiconductors, such as TiO 2 [137–139], CdS [140], ZnO [141], CdSe(ZnS) [142] etc . De Freitas et al .…”

“…However, the achieved power conversion efficiency of bicomponent hybrid systems (ZnO NRA/P3TH) is not as good as those based on disordered nanorods. The introduction of third party molecule/materials at the interfaces can greatly enhance the performance of the final heterojunctions, e.g., using ZnO/CdS-core/shell heterostructures [158], adding a third component of a small dye molecule [141,147,159] or [6,6]-phenyl-C 61 -butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) [156]. Compared with the original bicomponent hybrid system of the conjugated polymer/inorganic semiconductor NRAs, an increment in the power conversion efficiency of the multicomponent NRA based system was found.…”