Above-11%-efficiency organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells with omnidirectional harvesting characteristics by employing hierarchical photon-trapping structures.

Hierarchical structures consisting of micropyramids and nanowires are used in Si/PEDOT:PSS hybrid solar cells to achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 11.48% with excellent omnidirectionality. The structure provides a combined concepts of superior light trapping ability, significant increase of p-n junction areas, and short carrier diffusion distance, improving the photovoltaic characteristics including short-circuit current density, fill factor, and PCE. The enhancement of power generation is up to 253.8% at high incident angles, showing the outstanding omnidirectional operation ability of hybrid cells with hierarchical Si surfaces. This properly designed hierarchical-structured device paves a promising way for developing low-cost, high-efficiency, and omnidirectional solar applications in the future.

An energy-harvesting scheme employing CuGaSe2 quantum dot-modified ZnO buffer layers for drastic conversion efficiency enhancement in inorganic-organic hybrid solar cells.

We demonstrated a promising route to enhance the performance of inverted organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices by the incorporation of CuGaSe2 (CGS) quantum dots (QDs) into the ZnO buffer layer of P3HT:PCBM-based devices. The modification of QDs provides better band alignment between the organic/cathode interface, improves ZnO crystal quality, and increases photon absorption, leading to more effective carrier transport/collection. By employing this energy-harvesting scheme, short-circuit current density, open-circuit voltage, and fill factor of the OPV device after CGS QD modification are improved by 9.43%, 7.02% and 6.31%, respectively, giving rise to a 23.8% enhancement in the power conversion efficiency.