Solar energy articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Improving the stability of perovskite solar cells remains crucial. Here, Ahn et al. show that trapped charges at grain boundaries induce the dissociation of the perovskite compound in the presence of moisture, and explain why degradation is irreversible under illumination and reversible in the dark.

    • Namyoung Ahn
    • , Kwisung Kwak
    •  & Mansoo Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In order to be practical for large-scale deployment, the cost of solar hydrogen generation must be significantly reduced. Here, the authors employ a triple-junction solar cell with two series connected polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysers to achieve solar to hydrogen efficiency of 30%.

    • Jieyang Jia
    • , Linsey C. Seitz
    •  & Thomas F. Jaramillo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In organic photovoltaics, electron acceptors are developed to replace fullerenes, and new donors need to be designed to match these acceptors. Here, the authors show that a polymer with strong temperature dependent aggregation and intentionally reduced crystallinity matches non-fullerene acceptors.

    • Zhengke Li
    • , Kui Jiang
    •  & He Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High performance CdTe thin film solar cells typically require a chloride activation treatment. Here, Majoret al. show that the main effect of the most effective chloride-based treatments is chloride accumulation at grain boundaries and that it results in improved open circuit voltages.

    • J. D. Major
    • , M. Al Turkestani
    •  & K. Durose

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In photovoltaics, sub-band gap energy photons can be harvested using up-conversion strategies. Here, the authors show that the thermally enhanced up-converted photoluminescence results in enhanced energy conversion, for an accessible temperature range and with a broad range of incident photon energy.

    • Assaf Manor
    • , Nimrod Kruger
    •  & Carmel Rotschild

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiple exciton generation could help limit thermalization losses in solar cells, but the efficiency of the process is still limited. Here, the authors show by atomistic calculations that type-II interfaces in nanostructures along with a change in exciton cooling rate favour multiple exciton generation.

    • Hagai Eshet
    • , Roi Baer
    •  & Eran Rabani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perovskite solar cells reach high efficiencies but their stability remains a challenge. Here, Bai et al. functionalize the fullerene-based transport layer with hydrophobic and crosslinkable molecules to prepare devices reaching 19% efficiency and degrading by 10% over a month in ambient conditions.

    • Yang Bai
    • , Qingfeng Dong
    •  & Jinsong Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The realization of photoelectrochemical water splitting requires the upscale of associated technologies. Here, the authors report a scalable design based on independent photovoltaic and electrochemical silicon thin-film modules and assess its solar hydrogen generation performance.

    • Bugra Turan
    • , Jan-Philipp Becker
    •  & Stefan Haas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Charge generation and transport are crucial to the performance of organic solar cells, but the mechanism remains controversial. Causa’ et al. show that the phase morphology of polymer:fullerene blends determines the exciton dissociation at femtoseconds, although the spatial separation can occur at picoseconds.

    • Martina Causa'
    • , Jelissa De Jonghe-Risse
    •  & Natalie Banerji

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