New Design of Potentially Low-cost Solar Cells Using TiO2/Graphite Composite as Photon Absorber

TL;DR

This paper proposes a low-cost solar cell design using a TiO2/graphite composite as the photon absorber, demonstrating higher efficiency than cells with individual materials, suggesting a promising approach for affordable solar energy.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel TiO2/graphite composite as an active photon absorber, showing enhanced efficiency over traditional single-material solar cells.

Findings

TiO2 absorbs ultraviolet photons to generate electron-hole pairs.

Graphite absorbs longer wavelength photons, contributing to absorption.

Composite of TiO2 and graphite yields higher efficiency than individual materials.

Abstract

A solar cell design using the combination of titanium dioxide and graphite as active photon absorbing materials were proposed. The titanium dioxide absorbs photons of nearly ultraviolet wavelengths to produce electron hole pairs, while graphite is expected to absorb photons of longer wavelengths. Although many authors have claimed that graphite is not a semiconductor, we observed that a model of a solar cell containing titanium dioxide only as the active material behaves exactly the same as a model containing graphite only as the active material. Additionally, we observed that a model of a solar cell made using a composite of titanium dioxide and graphite as the active material had much higher efficiency than solar cells made using titanium dioxide only or graphite only active materials.