Nanomaterials and nanostructures for efficient light absorption and photovoltaics

Nanomaterials and nanostructures hold promising potency to enhance the performance of solar cells by improving both light trapping and photo-carrier collection. Meanwhile these new materials and structures can be fabricated in a low-cost fashion, enabling cost-effective production of photovoltaics. In this review, we summarize the recent development of studies on intriguing optical properties of nanomaterials/nanostructures and efforts on building solar cell devices with these materials and structures. As the family of nanomaterials has great diversity, we highlighted a number of representative materials and structures, including nanowires, nanopillars, nanocones, nanodomes, nanoparticles, etc. And we have covered materials include crystalline Si, amorphous Si, CdS, CdSe, CdTe, ZnO, CuInSe2, etc. These materials and structures have different physical properties, such as band-gap, absorption coefficient, surface/bulk recombination rate, etc., as well as different synthesis/fabrication approaches. Works on these materials and structures have laid a solid foundation for developing a new generation photovoltaics. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.