Abstract
Suspensions of single-walled, double-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were generated in the same solvent at similar concentrations. Films were fabricated from these suspensions and used in carbon nanotube/silicon heterojunction solar cells and their properties were compared with reference to the number of walls in the nanotube samples. It was found that single-walled nanotubes generally produced more favorable results; however, the double and multi-walled nanotube films used in this study yielded cells with higher open circuit voltages. It was also determined that post fabrication treatments applied to the nanotube films have a lesser effect on multi-walled nanotubes than on the other two types.
Highlights
The search for efficient, low-cost renewable energy sources is one of great importance in the modern world
Suspensions of each nanotube type were produced under the exact same solvent conditions and procedures. This allowed an unambiguous comparison to be made between different nanotube types in a silicon/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) heterojunction solar cell in which the suspension and film preparation were identical
It was observed that one single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) sample produced a higher efficiency than the other samples, both single-walled samples and the double-walled sample produced similar power conversion efficiencies as each other, with a difference of less than 0.5% between the three samples
Summary
The search for efficient, low-cost renewable energy sources is one of great importance in the modern world. In 2007, Wei et al designed a new kind of cell in which CNTs function as transport charge carriers, and assist in exciton separation [10,11,12,13], using double-walled CNTs (DWCNTs) deposited via water expansion and aqueous film transfer of an as grown chemical vapor deposition (CVD) film [11,12] While these cells had a power conversion efficiency of only 1.3% (compared to commercial silicon cells at generally 13%–25%) [14,15] many improvements have since been made to the cell design and doping methods, with 15% efficiencies reported in 2012 [2] and 17% efficiencies reported in 2015 [6,16]. This study further improves on previous nanotube comparisons by using nanotubes that were chosen to be of similar length and the films were all produced using the exact same procedure
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