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Materials for Thin-Film Solar Cells and Their Device Implications: The...
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Materials for Thin-Film Solar Cells and Their Device Implications: The State of the Art

A special issue of Coatings (ISSN 2079-6412). This special issue belongs to the section "Surface Engineering for Energy Harvesting, Conversion, and Storage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 2582

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Rasha A. Awni

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Astronomy and Wright Center of PV Innovation and Commercialization, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, USA
Interests: solar cells; device physics; electrical properties; capacitance spectroscopy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Stephen K. O'Leary

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada
Interests: thin-film characterization; optical functions; device performance
Dr. Mohammed Razooqi Alaani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Assistant
Department of Physics and Astronomy and Wright Center of PV Innovation and Commercialization, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, USA
Interests: thin-films; photovoltaics; optical properties; spectroscopic ellipsometry

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Thin-film photovoltaics offer a clean and renewable source of electrical power of virtually unlimited and yet to be realized potential. Recently, notable advancements have been accrued in thin-film photovoltaic technology, which consists of materials such as perovskites, amorphous or polycrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, and gallium arsenide, including both improving improved solar cell performance and reduced production costs. In order to truly realize the future potential of thin-film photovoltaic technology, at this juncture, it is instructive to take stock and critically examine all the factors responsible for power conversion losses within such devices, with the hope that such an exposition will allow researchers to devise means of ameliorating, or perhaps even exploiting, the drawbacks of today’s thin-film photovoltaic technology offerings.

Many challenges impede our ability to improve thin-film solar cell device performance, such as the quality of the materials, fabrication methods, and thermal and chemical treatments. Here, in this Special Issue, we aim to cover the latest advances in thin-film photovoltaic materials and solar cell devices in terms of the implementation of new thin-film materials that are incorporated in solar cells, materials synthesized, and device fabrication and characterization.

In this Special Issue, we encourage researchers to contribute and submit their manuscripts on the aspects of the field of thin-film solar cell materials and device research and cover some of the topics mentioned above. Full papers and review submissions are welcome.

Dr. Rasha A. Awni
Prof. Dr. Stephen K. O'Leary
Guest Editors

Mohammed Razooqi Alaani
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Coatings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • materials synthesis
  • thin film preparation
  • surface and interface
  • solar cell materials
  • device fabrication
  • solar cells
  • optical, electrical, structural properties

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

9 pages, 1510 KiB  
Article
A Comparative Study of Organic Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Anatase TiO2 and Amorphous Free Mixed Phase’s Anatase/Rutile P25 TiO2 Photoanodes
by Kadhim Al-Attafi, Majed H. Dwech, Hamza A. Mezher, Andrew Nattestad and Jung Ho Kim
Coatings 2023, 13(1), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings13010121 - 9 Jan 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1532
Abstract
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) remain an interesting photovoltaic concept, although recent times have seen their envisioned broad-scale applications being replaced with more niche ones. Nevertheless, as a key component of DSCs, titanium(IV) oxide (TiO2) must be produced in a large volume, [...] Read more.
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) remain an interesting photovoltaic concept, although recent times have seen their envisioned broad-scale applications being replaced with more niche ones. Nevertheless, as a key component of DSCs, titanium(IV) oxide (TiO2) must be produced in a large volume, low cost, and highly reproducible manner. Degussa P25 remains a benchmark TiO2 product, addressing the first two of the above points very well. Post-treatment processes that may also be carried out on a large scale give some hope to addressing the reproducibility issue. This paper builds on our previous works wherein mixed-phase P25 (anatase + rutile + amorphous TiO2) was converted into an amorphous free form by selectively dissolving and recrystallizing the amorphous component. Here we investigated the performance of metal-free organic dye (D149)-based DSCs with three different TiO2 films: (1) as-received P25 (TiO2-P25), (2) amorphous-free P25 (TiO2-HP25), and (3) anatase nanoparticles obtained from Dyesol (TiO2-DSL). DSCs based on TiO2-HP25 showed comparable performance (5.8 ± 0.2% PCE) to DSCs based on the TiO2-DSL (5.8 ± 0.4% PCE) and substantially higher than for devices based on the as-obtained P25 nanoparticles (3.9 ± 0.4% PCE). The enhancement resulting from the post-processing of P25 derives from simultaneous increases in photo-current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (VOC), and the fill factor (FF), due to enhancing the dye-loading capability and the charge-transport efficiency (suppressing the electron recombination) as a result of the removal of amorphous barriers and associated defect states. This is in line with enhancing DSC performance based on the organometallic N719 dye we reported previously. However, the photoanode material based on abundant P25 TiO2 sensitized with high-extinction-coefficient organic D149 dye can be adopted as a cost-effective DSC as an alternative to relatively high-cost DSCs based on the commercial anatase TiO2 sensitized with organometallic N719 dye. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materials for Thin-Film Solar Cells and Their Device Implications: The State of the Art)
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