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New materials for high voltage solar cells used as building blocks for third generation photovoltaics (High-Voltage PV)
Start date: Mar 1, 2009, End date: Feb 28, 2011 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Global warming caused by the combustion of fossil energy carriers is the biggest ‎environmental threat for the 21st century, which has boosted the demand for ‎‎“clean energy”. Scientific breakthroughs are needed in the photovoltaic (PV) sector to reduce ‎the price of PV-generated electricity and thus to become compatible with ‎conventional power plants. This can only be achieved with new type of solar ‎cells comprising of novel materials which are cheaper than current silicon ‎technology and which allow large scale production at low cost. Nano-‎structured solar cells such as the dye-sensitized (DSSC), quantum dot ‎sensitized or polymer based solar cells are promising candidates. Until now ‎improvement of such cells aims mostly towards the modification of one ‎component within existing cell architectures (for example the investigation of ‎several dyes in DSSCs, while the electron and hole conducting media remain ‎unchanged). It is the intention of the proposed research to investigate ‎materials which have not been attracted considerable attention for ‎photovoltaic applications as well as materials which are already widely used. In a first step we aim to screen materials for solar ‎cells which are based on a large bandgap window layer and a absorber with a ‎bandgap between 1.4 – 2.8 eV. This requires the preparation of a large number of devices and the acquisition ‎and analysis of huge amount of data. We intend to adopt techniques ‎commonly used in pharmacy and biology, where large amounts of samples ‎are screened and analyzed. ‎In the second phase the photovoltage limitations are investigated and the voltage will be maximized. In the final phase interface geometry will be changed to increae the photocurrent.

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