Graphene and its derivatives for solar cells application

Abstract

Graphene has played the role of game-changer for conductive transparent devices indebted to its unique two dimensional (2D) structures and gained an exceptional opportunity to be employed in energy industry. In the past two decades graphene has been merged with the concept of photovoltaic (PV) material and exhibited a significant role as a transparent electrode, hole/electron transport material and interfacial buffer layer in solar cell devices. This review covers the different methods of graphene fabrication and broadly discusses the recent advances in graphene-based solar cells, including bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic, dye-sensitized and perovskite solar cell deices. The power conversion efficiency surpassed 20.3% for graphene-based perovskite solar cells and hit the efficiency of 10% for BHJ organic solar cells. Except the part of charge extracting and transport to the electrodes, graphene has another unique role of device protection against environmental degradation via its packed 2D network structure and provides long-term environmental stability for PV devices. We highlighted a comparative study on the role of graphene and its derivatives in photovoltaic devices. After all, the potential issues and the perspective for future research in graphene-based materials for PV applications are presented.