The issue addressed was the lack of solar cell technology fulfilling stringent criteria of efficiency, stability, low prize, flexibility, transparency, tunable cell size, esthetics.
The aim of this project was to develop a new solar cell concept, with fast and loss-reduced photo-generated carrier to boost the solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency and to power so far unpowerable devices and objects.
The CHROMTISOL solar cell concept bears a large potential to outperform existing thin film photovoltaic technologies and concepts due to unique combination of materials and their complementary properties.
The research focus was given to extremely promising materials, yet unseen and unexplored in a joint device, whose combination may solve traditional solar cells drawbacks (carrier recombination, narrow light absorption). It featured a high surface area interface (higher than any other known PVs concept) based on ordered anodic TiO2 nanotube arrays, homogenously infilled with nanolayers of high absorption coefficient crystalline chalcogenide or organic chromophores using different techniques, yet unexplored for this purpose. After addition of supporting constituents, a solid-state solar cell with an extremely large incident area for the solar light absorption and optimized electron pathways was created.
Secondary goal was the development of advanced techniques for infilling of high-aspect ratio nanotubular TiO2 arrays with inorganic and organic chromophores. The filling method of the first choice was the Atomic Layer Deposition (further noted as ALD). However, there were at least 3 other methods employed (electrodeposition, solution processing, in-situ synthesis).
Conclusion of this action:
Fully functional, robust and stable solid-state solar cell according to the proposed CHROMTISOL concept was realized. The details are described below and in the scienfic report.
