Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Hybrid Solar Cells with Polymer
and Inorganic Nanocrystals
Qidong Tai and Feng Yan
Abstract In this chapter, we aim to present an overview of the development of the
polymer/inorganic hybrid solar cells. In the first section, we introduce the basic
concepts of hybrid solar cells including the device architecture and operation
mechanism. Then we summarize the recent progress in this area classified by the
nanomorphology of inorganic nanocrystals, including nanoparticles, nanorods,
nanowires, and vertically aligned nanoarrays. The nanoscale morphology of the
inorganic crystal could play a decisive role in determining the conversion effi-
ciencies of the hybrid solar cells. Finally, we focus on the interface modifications
involved in hybrid solar cells. It is noteworthy that an appropriate interface
modification could not only facilitate the exciton dissociation but also suppress the
backward recombination of carriers and therefore significantly boost the device
performance.
9.1 Introduction
To meet the urgent needs for cheap and clean energy, great efforts have been done
on the development of the third generation of photovoltaics, including dye-sensi-
tized solar cells (DSSCs) [
1
] and bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells [
2
-
4
], which
have the advantages of low cost, promising power conversion efficiency (PCE),
facile fabrication by contact printing [
5
] or roll-to-roll process [
6
,
7
] for large area
devices, and so on. State-of-the-art BHJ solar cells are composed of conjugated
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