Shining a light on transition metal chalcogenides for sustainable photovoltaics

Abstract

Transition metal chalcogenides are an important family of materials that have received significant interest in recent years as they have the potential for diverse applications ranging from use in electronics to industrial lubricants.

Bandgap Optimization of Perovskite Semiconductors for Photovoltaic Applications

“…In the case of the single-junction PSC, Figure 1c illustrates the maximum attaina-ble PCE under sunlight as af unctiono ft he E g of the perovskite semiconductor,w hich is estimatedb ased on the Shockley-Queisser (SQ) limit. [10,11] In general,aperovskite materialw ith an ideal bandgapo f% 1.3 eV is expected to deliver the highest PCE. This is because al arger E g results in non-absorption of a large portion of photonsi nt he solar spectrum.W hereas if the perovskite absorber has a E g that is too small, mostp hotons have much more energy than necessary to excite electrons acrosst he bandgap, resulting in inefficient absorption of the sunlight.…”

Synthesis of nanostructured powders and thin films of iron sulfide from molecular precursors

“…13 Of these compounds, cubic pyrite (FeS 2 ) is of interest for its potential use as an absorber material in photovoltaic and photo-electrochemical applications because of its suitable band gap (0.80-0.95 eV) and high absorption coefficient ($10 5 M À1 cm À1 ) extending over the visible energy range. [14][15][16][17][18] The favoured phases for Li-ion batteries are suggested to be troilite (FeS) and pyrrhotite (Fe 1Àx S). For supercapacitor applications, troilite (FeS) and greigite (Fe 2 S 3 ) are potential candidate materials.…”

The deposition of thin films of cadmium zinc sulfide Cd1−x Zn x S at 250 °C from spin-coated xanthato complexes: a potential route to window layers for photovoltaic cells

“…Thin films and nanostructures properties are sensitive to the preparation method used and synthetic route [13][14][15]. Numerous techniques have been used to grow CdS and Cd 1-x Zn x S thin films including dip coating [16], electrodeposition [17], chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [18], aerosol-assisted CVD (AA-CVD) [19][20][21], chemical bath deposition (CBD) [2,8,22,23], spray pyrolysis [24,25], thermal evaporation [26], successive ionic layer and reaction (SILAR) [27], thermolysis [28,29], electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy (ECALE) [11], sol-gel spin coating, [30,31] doctor's blade, [32] and others [14,21,33,34].…”