The connection between noncentrosymmetric materials’ structure, electronic structure, and bulk photovoltaic performance remains not well understood. In particular, it is still unclear which photovoltaic (PV) mechanisms are relevant for the recently demonstrated visible-light ferroelectric photovoltaic (K,Ba)(Ni,Nb)O3−δ . In this paper, we study the bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) of (K,Ba)(Ni,N...

Ambipolar organic semiconductor blends, i.e. mixtures of electron and hole conducting materials, attain growing interest due to their utilization in quasi-complementary organic fieldeffect transistors and organic photovoltaic cells. Many investigations in the latter field have reported an increase of the solar cell efficiency by optimizing the balance between charge carrier transport in phase-s...

Title of Thesis: CONTACTLESS SPECTRAL-DEPENDENT MEASUREMENT OF BULK LIFETIME AND SURFACE RECOMBINATION VELOCITY IN SILICON PHOTOVOLTAIC MATERIALS John Frederick Roller, Master of Science 2016 Thesis Directed By: Dr. Mario Dagenais, ECE Charge carrier lifetime measurements in bulk or unfinished photovoltaic (PV) materials allow for a more accurate estimate of power conversion efficiency in compl...

To the Editor — The defining property of ferroelectrics is a reversible spontaneous electric polarization whose magnitude and direction can be sensitively tuned by varying temperature, pressure, electric field, strain or chemical composition1. What makes ferroelectrics interesting is the coupling of the electric polarization to other properties of the material. For instance, ferroelectric– ferr...

Much current research in photovoltaic technology is directed towards using “abundant” base metals like copper and zinc (e.g., CZTS or more recently CZTSSe) to overcome the the challenges of material scarcity posed by the use of tellurium, indium, germanium, and gallium in current generation products (e.g., CdTe, CIGS, aSi/thin-film Si). The supply of these materials is limited because they are ...

In this review uses of Polymer electrets as an important class of organic materials finding its use in variety of electronic and electrical engineering industry ranging from photovoltaic cells, transducers, dosimeters and other applications are discussed.

In the development of novel materials for enhanced photovoltaic (PV) performance, it is critical to have quantitative knowledge of the initial performance, as well as the performance of these materials over the required 25-year lifetime of the PV system. Lifetime and degradation science (L&DS) allows for the development of new metrology and metrics, coupled to degradation mechanisms and rates. ...

We present a review of the basic features of polycrystalline thin-film CdTe solar cells and modules and then survey the outstanding fundamental issues and research challenges for application of this materials system to photovoltaic devices.