ANSTO's research capabilities, led by the OPAL nuclear research reactor and associated instruments provide access to users investigating areas as diverse as materials, life sciences, climate change and mining/engineering.
Semiconductor Materials for Dye- Sensitised Solar Cell Applications
5. Semiconductor Materials for Dye-Sensitised Solar Cell Applications
Semiconductor materials form the basis of solar cells. By studying these materials in detail, the mechanisms of photocurrent generation can be understood and better materials devised.
CuSCN is a p-type semiconductor and has applications in dye-sensitized solar cell applications. Investigations of the CuSCN system have been very sparse with only limited X-ray structural data being reported. Furthermore, although CuSCN exhibits well-defined polymorphism there have been no investigations into the thermal transformations that may exist and their possible relationship to photocurrent production and solar-cell efficiency.
This project will use solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, neutron and X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infra-red spectroscopy, and computational methods (Density Functional Theory and Molecular Dynamics) to characterise the primary polymorph structures and analyse their unit-cell behaviour upon thermal transformation.
Further investigations into the structural chemistry of these systems will seek to lower the three-dimensional nature of the network structure to a one-dimensional chain by selectively functionalizing the thiocyanate framework. Studies of the alteration to photocurrent densities that are induced by these changes will then be made.