Mitchell, Lauren and Griffin, Becky and Smith, Daniel and Danos, Lefteris (2024) Photoelectrochemical characterisation of solar cell absorber materials. In: International Conference on Nanosciences & Nanotechnologies (NN24), 2024-07-02 - 2024-07-05.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
There have been many photoelectrochemical studies into the electron transfer mechanism present in dye/quantum dot sensitised titanium dioxide electrodes,1 but not a lot of research has been conducted into the non-radiative energy transfer mechanism in dye coated silicon wafers.2 A three electrode photoelectrochemical cell can offer quick information into the suitability of a solar cell absorber material and avoid solid state junction and metal contact formation. This can provide further insight into the possible mechanism of silicon photosensitisation.3-4 Cyclic voltammetry and photo-chronoamperometry was carried out on Si(111) n-type anodes constructed from thick wafers and thin (2μ) silicon on insulator (SOI) respectively. The surface of the anodes was examined with the presence of native oxide but also removing the oxide and chemically modifying the silicon surface via chlorination followed by methylation which has shown to increase the passivation of the silicon surface and significantly reduce electron-hole recombination. The successful passivation was confirmed with silicon photoluminescence which showed a significant enhancement on the near infrared silicon emission. The incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) vs incident wavelength was recorded for all the silicon anodes studied.