An Overview of Nanoscale Techniques for Photovoltaics and Solar Cell Fabrication

Over the past decade, research in photovoltaics and solar cell fabrication has boomed worldwide and has been receiving a great attention from researchers in the industry and the academia alike. The trend has recently been towards applying innovative and advanced techniques in fabricating solar cells and also discovering new means of converting the solar energy into electrical energy with improved characteristics compared to conventional silicon-based wafers. This paper describes some of the various new applications of nanotechnology in photovoltaics and the implementation of nanoscale techniques in solar cell fabrication. It describes dye-sensitised solar cells using nanocrystalline Titanium dioxide, TiO2 DSSC; and illustrates the benefits of using nanoscale materials, such as Silicon nanowires, different types of polymers and organic materials, and quantum dots as means of absorbing the photons and converting them to electrons. In addition to presenting the advantages of incorporating nanoscale techniques in making solar cells, the paper shows how different and scattered the presented methods are. It discusses the essential need to classify these new solar cell fabrication methods and do unbiased comparisons between them in order to determine the best paths for growth in this field.