Four different types of solar cells prepared in different laboratories have been characterized by impedance spectroscopy (IS): thin-film CdS/CdTe devices, an extremely thin absorber (eta) solar cell made with microporous TiO2/In(OH)xSy/PbS/PEDOT, an eta-solar cell of nanowire ZnO/CdSe/CuSCN, and a solid-state dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) with Spiro-OMeTAD as the transparent hole conductor. ...

An efficient antireflection coating is critical for the improvement of silicon solar cell performance via increased light coupling. Here, we have grown well-aligned ZnO nanowhisker (NW) arrays on Czochralski silicon solar cells by a seeding-growth two-step process. It is found that the ZnO NWs have a great effect on the macroscopic antireflection effect and, therefore, improves the solar cell p...

The demand for highly efficient photovoltaic modules at low costs leads to new solar cell designs. For enhanced module efficiency the cell efficiency has to be optimized regarding later operation under module conditions. This implies that the interconnected solar cell structure has to be assessed. Commonly the solar cell itself is optimized separately. In this work an easy to implement cell des...

This paper proposes a novel concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system with improved irradiation uniformity and system efficiency. CPV technology is very promising its for highly efficient solar energy conversion. A conventional CPV system usually uses only one optical component, such as a refractive Fresnel lens or a reflective parabolic dish, to collect and concentrate solar radiation on the sola...

An expression has been derived for the absorption coefficient α of an incident radiation with energy ħω by a semiconductor with band-gap ΔE0. For a multilayer solar cell composed of seven layers that facilitate the solar cell to use the seven colours of the white light for maximum efficiency, the expression for the solar current ISC has been used to calculate the value of the charge carrier den...

UNLABELLED The solar cell structure of n-type poly-silicon/5-nm-diameter silicon nanocrystals embedded in an amorphous silicon oxycarbide matrix (30 layers)/p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon/Al electrode was fabricated on a quartz substrate. An open-circuit voltage and a fill factor of 518 mV and 0.51 in the solar cell were obtained, respectively. The absorption edge of the solar cell was 1...

In this paper, we discuss two new paradigms for enabling costeffective III-V solar cell photovoltaics using (i) our novel layer transfer technology, called controlled spalling and (ii) new solar cell device structures. First, we present the application of the controlled spalling for making high-efficiency thin-film multijunction solar cells. Finally, a novel GaAs heterojunction solar cell struc...

in the present study we focus on the effect of donor/acceptor composition on the conjugation and ordered structure of the donor-polymer in the most common organic solar cell based on a bulk heterojunction of regioregular poly(3hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). In addition, we try to illustrate the effect of composition, over a wide range, on the inter...

The current polymer-exchange membrane fuel cell technology cannot directly use biomass as fuel. Here we present a solar-induced hybrid fuel cell that is directly powered with natural polymeric biomasses, such as starch, cellulose, lignin, and even switchgrass and wood powders. The fuel cell uses polyoxometalates as the photocatalyst and charge carrier to generate electricity at low temperature....

CdS/CdSe quantum dots co-sensitized TiO2 solar cell was prepared by combining the successive ion layer absorption and reaction (SILAR) method and chemical bath deposition (CBD) method for the fabrication of CdS and CdSe quantum dots, respectively. The effect of CdSe deposition time on the solar cell performance was investigated. It was found that the optimized deposition time for CdSe was 3 h, ...