Polychiral Semiconducting Carbon Nanotube–Fullerene Solar Cells
Abstract
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have highly desirable attributes for solution-processable thin-film photovoltaics (TFPVs), such as broadband absorption, high carrier mobility, and environmental stability. However, previous TFPVs incorporating photoactive SWCNTs have utilized architectures that have limited current, voltage, and ultimately power conversion efficiency (PCE). Here, we report a solar cell geometry that maximizes photocurrent using polychiral SWCNTs while retaining high photovoltage, leading to record-high efficiency SWCNT–fullerene solar cells with average NREL certified and champion PCEs of 2.5% and 3.1%, respectively. Moreover, these cells show significant absorption in the near-infrared portion of the solar spectrum that is currently inaccessible by many leading TFPV technologies.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Chemical Society. Received: June 23, 2014; Published: August 7, 2014. Work at the University of Kansas (S.R.) was supported by the Army Research Office Young Investigator Program (W911NF-14-1-0443, material design/self-assembly and photovoltaics), and Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Award No. DE-FG02-13ER46937 (organic synthesis and coating). Work at Northwestern University (M.C.H. and T.J.M) was supported as part of the Argonne–Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0001059. T.A.S. and K.A.L. acknowledge graduate research fellowships through the National Science Foundation. Work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.B. and J.C.G.) was supported by an MITEI Seed Fund project. The authors thank P. Ciszek and S. Christensen at NREL for their assistance with cell certification. UPS was performed in the NUANCE facility at Northwestern University, which is supported by the NSF-MRSEC (DMR-1121262), Keck Foundation, and State of Illinois. These authors (M.G. and T.A.S.) contributed equally to this work. M.G. designed, fabricated, and characterized inverted geometry cells. T.A.S. prepared and characterized carbon nanotube samples and interfacial layers. Y.X. and D.J. fabricated and characterized regular geometry cells. M.B. carried out DFT calculations. K.A.L. performed work function measurements. All authors discussed results and participated in the preparation of the manuscript. J.G., S.R., T.J.M., and M.C.H. supervised the project. The authors declare no competing financial interest.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - nl5027452_si_001.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 60449
- DOI
- 10.1021/nl5027452
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150923-142328234
- W911NF-14-1-0443
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- DE-FG02-13ER46937
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0001059
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- DMR-1121262
- NSF
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- State of Illinois
- Created
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2015-09-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field