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New nanostructured thin film shows promise for efficient solar energy conversion
Date:1/8/2008

SANTA CRUZ, CA--In the race to make solar cells cheaper and more efficient, many researchers and start-up companies are betting on new designs that exploit nanostructures--materials engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter. Using nanotechnology, researchers can experiment with and control how a material generates, captures, transports, and stores free electrons--properties that are important for the conversion of sunlight into electricity.

Two nanotech methods for engineering solar cell materials have shown particular promise. One uses thin films of metal oxide nanoparticles, such as titanium dioxide, doped with other elements, such as nitrogen. Another strategy employs quantum dots--nanosize crystals--that strongly absorb visible light. These tiny semiconductors inject electrons into a metal oxide film, or "sensitize" it, to increase solar energy conversion. Both doping and quantum dot sensitization extend the visible light absorption of the metal oxide materials.

Combining these two approaches appears to yield better solar cell materials than either one alone does, according to Jin Zhang, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zhang led a team of researchers from California, Mexico, and China that created a thin film doped with nitrogen and sensitized with quantum dots. When tested, the new nanocomposite material performed better than predicted--as if the functioning of the whole material was greater than the sum of its two individual components.

"We have discovered a new strategy that could be very useful for enhancing the photo response and conversion efficiency of solar cells based on nanomaterials," said Zhang.

"We initially thought that the best we might do is get results as good as the sum of the two, and maybe if we didn't make this right, we'd get something worse. But surprisingly, these materials were much better."

The group's findings were reported in the Journal of Ph
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Contact: Tim Stephens
stephens@ucsc.edu
831-459-2495
University of California - Santa Cruz
Source:Eurekalert

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