Abstract
Recently a new field in photovoltaics (PV) is emerging, focusing on solar cells that are entirely based on metal oxide semiconductors. The all-oxide PV approach is very attractive due to the chemical stability, non-toxicity and abundance of many metal oxides that potentially allow manufacturing under ambient conditions. Metal oxides (MOs) are today widely used as components in PV cells such as transparent conducting front electrodes or electron transport layers, while only very few MOs have been used as light absorbers. In this chapter we review recent developments of all-oxide PV systems, which until today are mostly based on Cu2O as a light absorber. Furthermore, new PV systems based on Bi2O3, Fe2O3 or ferroelectric BiFeO3 are discussed, which have recently attracted considerable attention. The performance of all-oxide PV cells is discussed in terms of general photovoltaic principles and directions for progress are proposed pointing towards the development of novel metal oxide semiconductors using combinatorial methods.
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