Nanocrystal solar cell

Previous fabrication methods relied on expensive molecular beam epitaxy processes, but colloidal synthesis allows for cheaper manufacturing.

This involves placing an amount of the quantum dot solution onto a flat substrate, which is then rotated very quickly.

Quantum dot based photovoltaic cells based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films were investigated in 1991[1] and were found to exhibit promising efficiency of converting incident light energy to electrical energy, and to be incredibly encouraging due to the low cost of materials used.

A single-nanocrystal (channel) architecture in which an array of single particles between the electrodes, each separated by ~1 exciton diffusion length, was proposed to improve the device efficiency[2] and research on this type of solar cell is being conducted by groups at Stanford, Berkeley and the University of Tokyo.

[7] Recent research has experimented with lead selenide (PbSe) semiconductor, as well as with cadmium telluride photovoltaics (CdTe), which has already been well established in the production of second-generation thin film solar cells.