High-Efficiency Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Si Nanostructure Solar Cells Using Selective Carrier Contact

Abstract

In this work, we developed a novel metal contact design for organic-inorganic Si nanostructure hybrid solar cells where the electrode is placed between poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) and Si substrate, compared to conventional front contact design for hybrid solar cells. Furthermore, for the effective carrier collection, the selective carrier contact such as vanadium oxide (V2Ox) film was inserted between the Si substrate and the front metal electrode. Photogenerated hole carriers can be selectively collected through the front contact thanks to the inversion layer of V2Ox/Si junction, leading to the significant improvement of open-circuit voltage and fill factor compared to conventional metal contact. In addition, the microscale metal mesh electrode with high transparency and conductivity were fabricated via the lithography and electroplating processes. In particular, our hybrid solar cells show the remarkably high value of external quantum efficiency over the entire wavelength of 500 to 1000 nm, indicating that the photocarriers generated in Si nanostructure can be effectively collected through the mesh electrode.