Because of the existence of interface Schottky barriers and depolarization electric field, ferroelectric films sandwiched between top and bottom electrodes are strongly expected to be used as a new kind of solar cells. However, the photocurrent with a typical order of μA/cm(2) is too low to be practical. Here we demonstrate that the insertion of an n-type cuprous oxide (Cu(2)O) layer between the Pb(Zr,Ti)O(3) (PZT) film and the cathode Pt contact in a ITO/PZT/Pt cell leads to the short-circuit photocurrent increasing 120-fold to 4.80 mA/cm(2) and power conversion efficiency increasing of 72-fold to 0.57% under AM1.5G (100 mW/cm(2)) illumination. Ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy and dark J-V characteristic show an ohmic contact on Pt/Cu(2)O, an n(+)-n heterojunction on Cu(2)O/PZT and a Schottky barrier on PZT/ITO, which provide a favorable energy level alignment for efficient electron-extraction on the cathode. Our work opens up a promising new method that has the potential for fulfilling cost-effective ferroelectric-film photovoltaic.
A systematic strategy for effectively engineering the charge extraction in inverted structured perovskite solar cells based on CH3NH3PbI3−xClxis provided. An optimized power conversion efficiency of 20.5% is realized.
Utilizing plasmonic nanostructures for efficient and flexible conversion of solar energy into electricity or fuel presents a new paradigm in photovoltaics and photoelectrochemistry research. In a conventional photoelectrochemical cell, consisting of a plasmonic structure in contact with a semiconductor, the type of photoelectrochemical reaction is determined by the band bending at the semiconductor/electrolyte interface. The nature of the reaction is thus hard to tune. Here instead of using a semiconductor, we employed a ferroelectric material, Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT). By depositing gold nanoparticle arrays and PZT films on ITO substrates, and studying the photocurrent as well as the femtosecond transient absorbance in different configurations, we demonstrate an effective charge transfer between the nanoparticle array and PZT. Most importantly, we show that the photocurrent can be tuned by nearly an order of magnitude when changing the ferroelectric polarization in PZT, demonstrating a versatile and tunable system for energy harvesting.
Instead of conventional semiconductor photoelectrodes, herein, we focus on BiFeO3 ferroelectric photoelectrodes to break the limits imposed by common semiconductors. As a result of their prominent ferroelectric properties, the photoelectrodes are able to tune the transfer of photo-excited charges generated either in BiFeO3 or the surface modifiers by manipulating the poling conditions of the ferroelectric domains. At 0 V vs Ag/AgCl, the photocurrent could be switched from 0 μA cm(-2) to 10 μA cm(-2) and the open-circuit potential changes from 33 mV to 440 mV, when the poling bias of pretreatment is manipulated from -8 V to +8 V. Additionally, the pronounced photocurrent from charge injection of the excited surface modifiers could be quenched by switching the poling bias from +8 V to -8 V.
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