Review on the degradation and device physics of quantum dot solar cells

Abstract

Briefly, we reviewed the latest progress in energy conversion efficiency and degradation rate of the quantum dot (QD) solar cells. QDs are zero dimension nanoparticles with tunable size and accordingly tunable band gap. The maximum performance of the most advanced QD solar cells was reported to be around 10%. Nevertheless, majority of research groups do not investigate the stability of such devices. QDs are cheaper replacements for silicon or other thin film materials with a great potential to significantly increase the photon conversion efficiency via two ways: (i) creating multiple excitons by absorbing a single hot photon, and (ii) formation of intermediate bands (IBs) in the band gap of the background semiconductor that enables the absorption of low energy photons (two-step absorption of sub-band gap photons). Apart from low conversion efficiency, QD solar cells also suffer from instability under real operation and stress conditions. Strain, dislocations and variation in size of the dots (under pressure of the other layers) are the main degradation resources. While some new materials (i.e. perovskites) showed an acceptable high performance, the QD devices are still inefficient with an almost medium rate of 4% (2010) to 10% (2015).