High Reduction of Interfacial Charge Recombination in PbS Heterojunction Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cells by Metal Oxide Surface Passivation
Qing Shen a, Yuki Kuga a, Jin Chang a, Taro Toyoda a, Iván Mora-SerE size= b, Juan Bisquert b, Shuzi Hayase c, Yuhei Ogomi c
a The University of Electro-Communications, Japan, Japan
b Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan, 204 Hibikino Wakamatsu-ku, Kitakyushu - Fukuoka, 808, Japan
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)
Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th
Organizer: Filippo De Angelis
Oral, Qing Shen, presentation 147
Publication date: 5th February 2015

Bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells based on colloidal QDs and metal oxide nanowires (NW) possess unique and outstanding advantages in light harvesting and charge collection. However, the high surface area of NW structure often brings about large amount of recombination (especially interfacial recombination) and limits the open-circuit voltage in BHJ solar cells [1,2].  This problem is solved here by passivating the surface of metal oxide component in PbS colloidal quantum dot solar cells (CQDSCs). By coating thin TiO2 layers on ZnO-NW surfaces, the open-circuit voltage and power conversion efficiency have been improved over 40% in PbS CQDSCs. The transient photovoltage decay and impedance spectroscopy characterizations indicated that the interfacial recombination was significantly reduced by the surface passivation strategy. High efficiency of 6.13% was achieved through the passivation approach and optimization for the length of ZnO-NW arrays (device active area: 16 mm2). All solar cells were tested under air conditions, and exhibited excellent air storage stability (without any performance decline over more than 130 days). This work highlights on the significance of metal oxide passivation in achieving high performance BHJ solar cells. The charge recombination mechanism uncovered in this work would shed light on the further improvement of PbS CQDSCs and/or other types of solar cells.


Fig. (a) Stability evaluation of bare and surface-passivated PbS CQDSCs with 1.6 ƒÊm length NW arrays. All devices were stored and tested in ambient atmosphere. (b) J-V curves of a NW length-optimized ZnO@TiO2/PbS cell measured by forward and reverse scans under AM 1.5 G illumination.
[1] J. Jean, S. Chang, P. R. Brown, J. J. Cheng, P. H. Rekemeyer, M. G. Bawendi, S. Gradeèak and V. BuloviE Adv. Mater., 2013, 25, 2790-2796. [2] H. Wang, T. Kubo, J. Nakazaki, T. Kinoshita and H. Segawa, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2013, 4, 2455-2460.
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