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Using dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) as a facile exploratory platform, Dr. Yang replaced the conventional planar transparent conducting oxides (TCO) electrodes in DSSCs with nanoarchitectured 3-dimensional (3-D) TCO electrodes, on which a PV layer is conformally coated, so as to drastically enlarge the TCO/PV interface area. Such 3-D TCO/PV structures not only provide sufficient PV materials to accommodate the incident solar flux, but radically shorten the transport path length in the PV layer. The built-in potential at the omnipresent TCO/PV interface promote the fast drift transport to prevail over the slow diffusive transport. Furthermore, special light-trapping optical structures such as photonic crystal-structured TCO are invented to synergistically enhance light harvesting so that the conflicting relationship between light harvesting and charge transport is transformed into synergistic relationship. This novel concept in her dissertation provides an effective solution to tackle the grand challenge and will have significant impact in the filed of photovoltaics.
About the author
Zhenzhen Yang is a joint postdoctoral research associate at Northern Illinois University and Argonne National Laboratory. She obtained her Ph.D in chemistry in 2011 at Northern Illinois University. Her research focuses on advanced photoelectrochemical characterization of dye-sensitized solar cells and nanocatalysts in Lithium air battery.
