Abstract
One alternative of low-cost solar cells is to develop new photovoltaic cells based on hybrid organic and inorganic materials. The certified efficiency record achieved from this type of devices has been frequently broken during the past decades. Now the maximum energy conversion efficiency has already reached above 11%. The inorganic materials, especially nanostructured materials, play a crucial role in these photovoltaic devices in that they can be used as electrodes, as well as in some cases as photoactive materials. This paper focuses on the most recent developments observed in the applications of inorganic materials in the hybrid solar cells (HSCs), mainly on dye-sensitized solar cells and polymer/ inorganic HSCs. This underscores the opportunity of realizing practical applications of these HSC devices.
Keywords: Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), hybrid solar cells (HSCs), inorganic semiconductor, nanomaterials, polymer/ inorganic HSCs, power conversion efficiency (PCE), polymer/inorganic HSCs, TiO2, CVD, photovoltaics, ZnO
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