Novel generation photovoltaic devices - UHasselt
Novel generation photovoltaic devices
Next to the activities on organic solar cells and Grätzel & hybrid solar cells, at IMO-IMOMEC there is ongoing exploratory research into other novel material systems for photovoltaic applications, including:
CIGS - One of these promising systems makes use of a CIGS (Cupper Indium Gallium (di)Selenium) layer. Thin film solar cells using these materials have shown lab efficiencies near 20%. IMO-IMOMEC is involved of the study of printable CIGS solar cells.
Silicon - In the domain of Si-based solar cells, IMO-IMOMEC studies the growth of silicon into a well defined structure of nanopillars. This will greatly reduce the amount of material needed to produce the inorganic solar cells and hence production cost can be reduced significantly. Additionally it is also expected these silicon nanopillars will greatly enhance the efficiency of the solar cells due to a larger contact area between the p and n-type regions and therefore a bigger chance of charge separation.
Carbon - Diamond, graphene, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes are explored in bilayer and bulk-heterojunction configurations towards photovoltaic energy conversion applications.
