Realization of poly (methyl methacrylate)-encapsulated solution-processed carbon-based solar cells: An emerging candidate for buildings’ comfort

Roy, Anurag; Ghosh, Aritra; Bhandari, Shubhranshu; Sundaram, Senthilarasu; Mallick, Tapas Kumar

Abstract

The self-assembling characteristics allow carbon nanomaterials to be readily explored, environmentally benign, solution-processed, low-cost, and efficient solar light-harvesting materials. An effort has been made to replace the regular photovoltaic device’s electrodes by different carbon allotrope-based electrodes. Sequential fabrication of carbon solar cells (SCs) was performed under ambient conditions, where FTO/graphene/single-walled carbon nanotubes/graphene quantum dots-fullerene/carbon black paste layers were assembled with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as an encapsulating layer. The PMMA layer provides significant improvement toward the entry of water vapor, hence leading to stability up to 1000 h. The photoconversion efficiency of the PMMA-encapsulated carbon SC has been increased by ∼105% and the stability decreased by only ∼10% after 1000 h of exposure to environmental moisture. Besides, the building integrated photovoltaic window properties achieved using this carbon SC were also investigated by using the color rendering index and the correlated color temperature, which can have an impact on the buildings’ occupants’ comfort. This study leads to an extensive integration to improve carbon-based materials because of their effective and useful but less-explored characteristics suitable for potential photovoltaic applications.

Citation

Roy, A., Ghosh, A., Bhandari, S., Sundaram, S., & Mallick, T. K. (2020). Realization of poly (methyl methacrylate)-encapsulated solution-processed carbon-based solar cells: An emerging candidate for buildings’ comfort. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 59(23), 11063-11071. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.9b06902

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 20, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: Mar 12, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 13, 2023
• Journal: Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
• Print ISSN: 0888-5885
• Electronic ISSN: 1520-5045
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 23
• Pages: 11063-11071
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.9b06902