Hybrid organic and inorganic solar cell based on a cyanine dye and quantum dots

Abstract

The combination of organic dyes with quantum dots (QDs) in solar cells can lead to more improvement in photovoltaic performance for such types of solar cells. Due to the quantum confinement, the photoluminescence (PL) of QDs can be tuned to match the absorption spectra of applied organic dyes. Herein, we introduce a new hybrid solar cell based on monomethine cyanine dye co-sensitized by CdS and CdTe/CdS core shell. The cyanine dye tends to aggregate on the surface of colloidal QDs due to electrostatic attraction followed by energy and electron transfer from QDs to cyanine dye. Electrophoretic deposition method was carried out to assist the cyanine dye loading on the surface of TiO2 thin film and the highest power conversion efficiency was 0.89% in case of cyanine dye co-sensitized by CdTe/CdS with open circuit voltage of 0.78 V and a photocurrent of 1.80 mA/ cm2.