Themed collection Solar energy

Photon upconversion of sunlight for solar cells is reviewed and the possibilities to increase the efficiencies of the upconverter materials are discussed.

This Perspective discusses areas where organic solar cell behavior diverges from traditional models, including geminate pair recombination illustrated here.

This article reviews recent advancements in biomimetic pathways for solar energy conversion, with a focus on water-splitting catalysis and photoelectrochemical cells.

This Perspective reviews recent progress in stretchable, elastic materials and devices for the utilization of solar energy for off-grid applications.

This review presents the current advances in light-driven water oxidation catalysts in the field of artificial photosynthesis.

The role of redox shuttles in dye-sensitized solar cells, DSSCs, is presented, with an emphasis on how the shuttle's properties affect photovoltaic performance, in addition to a critical literature review on attempts to use outersphere redox shuttles to replace the ubiquitous triiodide/iodide shuttle.

In this article we discuss the challenges in fabrication, design and characterization of polymer tandem cells and approaches taken to overcome these challenges.

This review summarizes recent advances in the synthesis and applications of graphene based materials for energy storage and conversion.

Transient-photovoltage measurements reveal the science behind achieving more radiation-hard polymer solar cells for space applications.

Fused hybrid: graphene was used as a “dopant” for semiconductors in band-structure engineering via π–π stacking interaction.

A high-potential zinc porphyrin and an iridium water-oxidation catalyst are combined to prepare a photoanode for a visible light water-splitting cell.

Integrating chemical electrocatalysts for water splitting and photoanode materials is longstanding challenge to achieve light-assisted water oxidation and is an attractive paradigm for the generation of solar fuels. In this work we use a silicon photoanode substrate for processing cobalt metal thin films to form a cobalt-based water oxidation catalyst (Co–Pi). The Co–Pi loaded electrodes show 100× improvement over the bare silicon photoanodes.

Cu-catalyzed vapor–liquid–solid growth and surface passivation techniques produce crystalline Si microwires of sufficient material quality for high-performance photovoltaics with >17% efficiency potential.

Roll-to-roll manufacture of OPV and integration into credit card sized flashlights for the OE-A demonstrate that large numbers (10 000 units) can be prepared in high technical yield.

A novel photovoltaic–thermoelectric hybrid device based on a dye-sensitized solar cell is presented with an overall efficiency of 13.8%.

Successful recipes can rest unexplained for decades while novelty rules the roost. We redress one such anomaly in photoelectrochemical photovoltaics.

Vertical phase segregation has been found to play a minor role compared to nanoscale crystallinity on the performance of inverted polymeric solar cells.

Resonant cavity coupling enables unity roughness DSSCs to reach 17% IPCE and 1.0 V under polarized monochromatic, prism-coupled illumination.

Water splitting using bacteriorhodopsin/TiO₂ nanotubes hybrid electrode

We scrutinize the impact of the anchoring group number of organic dyes on the optoelectric features of dye-sensitized solar cells.

Photo-assisted electrodeposition of Co–Pi electrocatalyst onto mesostructured α-Fe₂O₃ photoanodes improves solar water oxidation.

A cobalt catalyst operating at high current and in natural waters is promising for renewable energy storage technologies.