First-principles design of nanostructured hybrid photovoltaics based on layered transition metal phosphates
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Lentz-2017-First-principles design of nanostru.pdf
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Author(s)
Lentz, Levi Carl
Kolpak, Alexie M.
Date Issued
April 2017
Journal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Lentz, Levi C. and Kolpak, Alexie M. “First-Principles Design of Nanostructured Hybrid Photovoltaics Based on Layered Transition Metal Phosphates.” Scientific Reports 7, no. 1 (April 2017): 1248 © 2017 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The performance of bulk organic and hybrid organic-inorganic heterojunction photovoltaics is often limited by high carrier recombination arising from strongly bound excitons and low carrier mobility. Structuring materials to minimize the length scales required for exciton separation and carrier collection is therefore a promising approach for improving efficiency. In this work, first-principles computations are employed to design and characterize a new class of photovoltaic materials composed of layered transition metal phosphates (TMPs) covalently bound to organic absorber molecules to form nanostructured superlattices. Using a combination of transition metal substitution and organic functionalization, the electronic structure of these materials is systematically tuned to design a new hybrid photovoltaic material predicted to exhibit very low recombination due to the presence of a local electric field and spatially isolated, high mobility, two-dimensional electron and hole conducting channels. Furthermore, this material is predicted to have a large open-circuit voltage of 1.7 V. This work suggests that hybrid TMPs constitute an interesting class of materials for further investigation in the search for achieving high efficiency, high power, and low cost photo Zirconium phosphate was chosen, in part, due to previous experiment voltaics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01296-0
