Letter abstract
Nature Materials 4, 455 - 459 (2005)
doi:10.1038/nmat1387
Subject Categories: Materials for energy | Nanoscale materials
Nanowire dye-sensitized solar cells
Matt Law1,2,3, Lori E. Greene1,2,3, Justin C. Johnson1, Richard Saykally1 and Peidong Yang1,2
Excitonic solar cells1—including organic, hybrid organic–inorganic and dye-sensitized cells (DSCs)—are promising devices for inexpensive, large-scale solar energy conversion. The DSC is currently the most efficient2 and stable3 excitonic photocell. Central to this device is a thick nanoparticle film that provides a large surface area for the adsorption of light-harvesting molecules. However, nanoparticle DSCs rely on trap-limited diffusion for electron transport, a slow mechanism that can limit device efficiency, especially at longer wavelengths. Here we introduce a version of the dye-sensitized cell in which the traditional nanoparticle film is replaced by a dense array of oriented, crystalline ZnO nanowires. The nanowire anode is synthesized by mild aqueous chemistry and features a surface area up to one-fifth as large as a nanoparticle cell. The direct electrical pathways provided by the nanowires ensure the rapid collection of carriers generated throughout the device, and a full Sun efficiency of 1.5% is demonstrated, limited primarily by the surface area of the nanowire array.
- Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
- Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
- These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to: Peidong Yang1,2 e-mail: p_yang@berkeley.edu
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