Organic thin-film solar cells with a conducting polymer (CP)/fullerene (C60) interpenetrating heterojunction structure, fabricated by spin-coating a CP onto a C60 deposit thin film, have been investigated and demonstrated to have high efficiency. The photovoltaic properties of solar cells with a structure of indium-tin-oxide/C60/ poly(3-hexylthiophene) (PAT6)/Au have been improved by the insert...

It is expected that residential units may replace   traditional heat and power production systems with cogeneration ones. Among the different cogeneration systems, fuel cell based systems are a suitable choice due to their high efficiency, high power density, low emission and low noise. In this paper, a cogeneration system based on solid oxide fuel cells is examined. The system, including the f...

A radiation test plan for thin-film photovoltaic technologies focused on a MEO flight experiment is outlined. The proton and electron radiation response of thin film, amorphous Si solar cells and CuInGaSe2 solar cells, with and without space coatings, is presented. The degradation of the photovoltaic output under penetrating and junction-damaging proton irradiation, and 0.6 MeV and 1 MeV electr...

Batteries and fuel cells contain a great potential to back up severe photovoltaic power fluctuations under inclement weather conditions. In this paper comparison between batteries and fuel cells is carried out in detail only for their PV power backup options, so their common attributes and different attributes is discussed. Then, the common and different attributes are compared; accordingly, th...

We present an investigation of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells with solution-processable graphene quantum dots (GQDs) as hole transport layers (HTLs). GQDs, with uniform sizes and good conductivity, are demonstrated to be excellent HTLs in both polymer solar cells (PSCs) and small-molecule solar cells (SMSCs) with the blend of poly(3-hexylthiophene):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (...

Photovoltaic cells are able to convert sunlight into electricity, providing enough of the most abundant and cleanest energy to cover our energy needs. However, the efficiency of current photovoltaics is significantly impeded by the transmission loss of sub-band-gap photons. Photon upconversion is a promising route to circumvent this problem by converting these transmitted sub-band-gap photons i...

Ferroelectric solar cells based on ferroelectric oxides have attracted significant attention owing to many unique advantages, such as the switchable photocurrent and photovoltage, and the above bandgap open circuit voltages. However, the small photocurrent densities of the typical ferroelectric solar cells greatly limit their photovoltaic performance. In this report, we experimentally revealed ...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the purchase power of the higher education system to catalyze the economy of scale necessary to ensure market competitiveness for solar photovoltaic electricity. Design/methodology/approach – The approach used here was to first determine the demand necessary to construct “Solar City factories”, factories that possess equipment and pro...