Nanowires improved charge separation and light utilization in metal-oxide solar cells

The power conversion efficiencies of electrodeposited Cu2O/ZnO p-n junction based solar cells are significantly improved by sandwiching a layer of spin-coated CdS nanowires (NWs) in between the electrochemically deposited Cu2O and ZnO layers. With the inclusion of the CdS NWs, there is observed a 5 fold improvement in the conversion efficiency, from 0.12% to 0.6%, as compared with that of the plain Cu2O/ZnO cell. The improvement is attributed to the enlarged p-n interface area and enhanced light harvesting, charge separation, and electron transport made possible by incorporating the single crystalline, relatively low band gap CdS NWs.