Abstract
In recent years, inorganic/organic hybrid solar cell concept has received growing attention for alternative energy solution because of the potential for facile and low-cost fabrication and high efficiency. Here, we report highly efficient hybrid solar cells based on silicon nanowires (SiNWs) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) using transfer-imprinted metal mesh front electrodes. Such a structure increases the optical absorption and shortens the carrier transport distance, thus, it greatly increases the charge carrier collection efficiency. Compared with hybrid cells formed using indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes, we find an increase in power conversion efficiency from 5.95% to 13.2%, which is attributed to improvements in both the electrical and optical properties of the Au mesh electrode. Our fabrication strategy for metal mesh electrode is suitable for the large-scale fabrication of flexible transparent electrodes, paving the way towards low-cost, high-efficiency, flexible solar cells.
Highlights
In recent years, photovoltaics have attracted growing research interest for applications in renewable energy technology due to rising concerns about climate change and the sustainability of fossil fuels
We have described the fabrication and characterization of silicon nanowires (SiNWs)/PEDOT:PSS hybrid solar cells with transparent and stable transfer-imprinted Au mesh front electrodes
The J−V and external quantum efficiency (EQE) results reveal that the Au mesh electrodes provide efficient charge carrier collection and high optical transmittance, which leads to a high power conversion efficiency (PCE)
Summary
Photovoltaics have attracted growing research interest for applications in renewable energy technology due to rising concerns about climate change and the sustainability of fossil fuels. The reported experimental efficiencies remain significantly lower than the estimated theoretical efficiency[7] as well as the efficiency of conventional Si solar cells To resolve these problems, inorganic/organic hybrid solar cells have been proposed, which are composed of an n-type crystalline Si nanostructure base and an organic poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophen e):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) hole-transport/emitter layer[8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. The general strategy for hybrid solar cells is to use unique nanostructures to absorb the broad solar spectrum, including nanowires (NWs)[8,9], nanocones[10], nanoholes[11], nanotubes[12], and nanopyramids[13] He et al designed a SiNW/pyramid binary structure with a large heterojunction area and excellent optical absorption using relatively short SiNWs14. Remarkably high quantum efficiency was observed at blue wavelengths, indicating efficient collection of photogenerated charge carriers in the SiNWs
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