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Vladimir Bulović. Wassweiler, Ella Louise. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 2019-07-17T20:59:51Z 2019-07-17T20:59:51Z 2019 2019 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121743 1102051276 Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019 Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 81-83). In recent years flexible and lightweight solar cell technologies have emerged as complements to silicon solar panels in the rapidly growing clean energy industry. As one of these new technologies, quantum dot solar cells have shown remarkable shelf life stability with increasingly competitive power conversion efficiencies, yet remain very expensive to manufacture. Some of these production costs are due to expensive materials used in the quantum dot solar cell device stack, namely gold electrodes. While gold cannot be used on a commercial scale, there are less expensive but more chemically reactive materials that can be used. Replacing gold with aluminum or copper in quantum dot solar cells would cut material costs by a factor of 12,000. In this work, I develop a new quantum dot solar cell architecture that maintains power conversion efficiency while dramatically reducing the electrode material costs. The electrical and optical properties of a nickel oxide film are developed for a new hole-transporting buffer layer as I determine how deposition conditions impact the sputtered film. I integrate the sputtered nickel oxide film into a new quantum dot solar cell architecture that enables aluminum or copper electrodes to be used instead of gold. Finally, I characterize the storage stability of the proposed architecture and investigate strategies for enhancing stability of devices containing chemically reactive top electrodes. By improving the storage stability of the new architecture, efficient quantum dot solar cells move closer to the production line. by Ella Louise Wassweiler. S.M. S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 83 pages eng Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Engineering scalable device architectures for lead sulfide quantum dot solar cells Thesis application/pdf 2019-07-17T20:59:49Z Publication Master EECS unknown unknown <Publication xmlns="https://www.openaire.eu/cerif-profile/1.1/" id="5a015363-745b-45d6-8662-83e53bebe6eb"> <Type xmlns="https://www.openaire.eu/cerif-profile/vocab/COAR_Publication_Types">http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_1843</Type> <Language>eng</Language> <Title>Engineering scalable device architectures for lead sulfide quantum dot solar cells</Title> <PublishedIn> <Publication> </Publication> </PublishedIn> <PublicationDate>2019</PublicationDate> <Authors> <Author> <DisplayName>Wassweiler, Ella Louise.</DisplayName> <Affiliation> <OrgUnit> </OrgUnit> </Affiliation> </Author> </Authors> <Editors> </Editors> <Publishers> <Publisher> <DisplayName>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</DisplayName> <OrgUnit /> </Publisher> </Publishers> <License>http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582</License> <Keyword>Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.</Keyword> <Abstract>In recent years flexible and lightweight solar cell technologies have emerged as complements to silicon solar panels in the rapidly growing clean energy industry. As one of these new technologies, quantum dot solar cells have shown remarkable shelf life stability with increasingly competitive power conversion efficiencies, yet remain very expensive to manufacture. Some of these production costs are due to expensive materials used in the quantum dot solar cell device stack, namely gold electrodes. While gold cannot be used on a commercial scale, there are less expensive but more chemically reactive materials that can be used. Replacing gold with aluminum or copper in quantum dot solar cells would cut material costs by a factor of 12,000. In this work, I develop a new quantum dot solar cell architecture that maintains power conversion efficiency while dramatically reducing the electrode material costs. The electrical and optical properties of a nickel oxide film are developed for a new hole-transporting buffer layer as I determine how deposition conditions impact the sputtered film. I integrate the sputtered nickel oxide film into a new quantum dot solar cell architecture that enables aluminum or copper electrodes to be used instead of gold. Finally, I characterize the storage stability of the proposed architecture and investigate strategies for enhancing stability of devices containing chemically reactive top electrodes. By improving the storage stability of the new architecture, efficient quantum dot solar cells move closer to the production line.</Abstract> <Access xmlns="http://purl.org/coar/access_right" > </Access> </Publication>