A ferroelectric-semiconductor-coupled solar cell with tunable photovoltage

To confirm the feasibility of nanodipole photovoltaic devices, we designed a practicable method of phase segregation to extract CdS piezoelectric nanoparticles from CdSTe mixed film. The constituent components of such device are mixture of ferroelectric CdS nanodipoles and CdTe semiconductor absorber. We observed an analogous electric hysteresis of photovoltage in such devices. Piezoresponse grain boundaries are observed, which contribute significantly to the hysteresis behavior of photovoltage. Abnormal photovoltage polarity of CdS nanodipole devices is also observed. But such phenomena cannot be explained by classical junctional device theory. We believe these provide convincing evidence for the mechanism of nanodipoles. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4794902]