Earth-Abundant Semiconductors Based Electric Power Window

Abstract

Earth-abundant semiconductors and their scalable heterostructures in the photovoltaic device are important in net-zero emission energy-eco system. Metal oxides have a high energy bandgap and pass light to the vision to enlighten the vision to the human eyes. This study demonstrates all-transparent photovoltaic framework by various heterostructures, for example, ZnO/NiO and ZnO/Co3O4/NiO. Transparent solar cells of these heterostructures exhibit power conversion efficiency from 0.36% and 1.33% under the simulated sunlight with average visible light transmittance in the range from 30-60%. We compared the energy band-diagram of these TPVs in equilibrium condition which shows that the efficiency can be significantly enhanced by the improving the charge carrier mobility. The performance parameters simulated metal-oxides steadfastly confirm their practical use to make sensors, smart window, eReader, and smartphone net-zero emission energy system. We demonstrate the proof-of-concept device of a smartphone glass cover with ZnO/NiO heterostructure for invisible power generation from indoor sunlight.