| AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Energy Frontiers Focus Topic | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session EN+EM+NS-WeM |
| Session: | Quantum Dot and Nanowire Solar Cells |
| Presenter: | Seongsin Margaret Kim, University of Alabama |
| Authors: | N. Harris, University of Alabama L. Butler, University of Alabama G. Shen, University of Alabama N. Dawahre, University of Alabama S. Wilbert, University of Alabama W. Baughman, University of Alabama S. Balci, University of Alabama P. Kung, University of Alabama S. Kim, University of Alabama |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
There is an increasing need to develop new low-cost materials and architectures for high efficiency solar cells in an attempt to provide a cost effective alternative to fossil fuels. Dyes, polymers and quantum dots have received tremendous amounts of attention due to their potential for solution processing and high absorption coefficients. Polymers and quantum dots are an attractive option for replacing dyes as the next generation low-cost absorber material due to their improved electronic properties and increased longevity. Bulk-heterojunction polymer based cells suffer from low carrier mobility and short carrier lifetimes which lead to high recombination rates. Quantum dots are promising sensitizing material because they potentially have improved stability over polymers and can potentially generate multiple excitons per photon. However, charge transport in solar cells based solely on quantum dots is generally accomplished through the hopping-mechanism and leads to increased recombination rates.
In this talk, we present a hybrid photovoltaic device structure based on quantum dot (QD)-functionalized single crystalline ZnO nanowire arrays embedded into a polymer matrix in order to achieved improved charge collection efficiencies from the QDs and transport through the cell. A number of issues need to be addressed, such as the enhancement of the coverage of the nanowires with quantum dots to increase photon absorption, as well as implementing a hole-transport medium that does not degrade the quantum dots and can potentially serve as a secondary absorber material that could potentially greatly improve device longevity, reproducibility and efficiency.
In this work, the specific photovoltaic device structure consisted of an InP/ZnS core-shell QD functionalized ZnO nanowire array that is embedded into a poly-3(hexylthiophene) (P3HT) hole transport matrix. The QD sensitized ZnO nanowires were characterized by optical absorption, confocal Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy, as well as high resolution and scanning transmission electron microscopy. In addition, interface between QDs and ZnO NWs were studied by Atom Probe Tomography. QDs with different absorption bands were concurrently functionalized onto the same nanowire arrays in order to broaden the final device absorption bandwidth. The ZnO:P3HT matrix was then planarized using inductively coupled plasma etching. The performance of planarized, quantum dot functionalized devices was subsequently compared to as-deposited and non-functionalized devices and the effect of QDs on device efficiency is presented. These include the study of the charge transfer mechanism using terahertz time domain spectroscopy.