Fabrication of cost effective nano Silicon solar cells from natural Minerals

Abstract

Solar electricity generation is one of the few low-carbon energy technologies with the potential to grow on a very large scale. Recent decades have seen rapid growth in solar electricity generation capacity: great improvements in technology, price, and performance, and the development of business models that have spurred investment in solar cell productions. Advance technologies are needed to empower tangible growth in solar electricity generation with low costs. Third generation solar cells are expected to achieve easonable efficiencies at lower cost than those based on available solar cell technology. Particularly, semiconductor nanocrystalline acceptor materialbased Hybrid Solar Cell (HSC) technology is most promising and low-cost technology. Si, CdS, ZnO, CuInS2, TiO2, PbS, and PbSe nanoparticles are widely used as an electron acceptor material. The quantum size effect is used to vary their bandgap as well as energy level by tuning the size of nanoparticles. As a result, polymer/nanoparticle based solar cells can absorb incident light, unlike the typical polymer/fullerene based solar cells wherein fullerene contributes avery little to the photocurrent generation. In addition, nanoparticles with stable structures (2 100 nm) provide desirable exciton dissociation and charge transport properties, which in turn helps to enhance Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) of HSCs. Many studies are conducted on applications of semiconductor nanocrystals in solar cells based on improvement in the ratio combinations, solution processing surface modification procedure, and shell composition are ways to enhance functionalities, such as charge transport and electron mobilities of the HSCs. newline