• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.12-16
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• 2018

The interest in perovskite solar cells has been skyrocketed owing to their rapid progress in efficiency in recent years. Here, we report the effect of non-stoichiometry in the methylammonium lead trihalide ($MAPbI_3$) precursors used in a solution process with different MAI : $PbI_2$ ratios of 1 : 0.96, 1 : 1.10, 1 : 1.15, and 1:1.20. With an increase in the $PbI_2$ content, the $PbI_2$ secondary phase was found to form at grain boundary region of perovskite thin films, as evidenced by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In terms of device performance, open-circuit voltage in particular is significantly improved with increasing the molar ratio of $PbI_2$, which is possibly ascribed to the reduction in recombination sites at grain boundary of perovskite and hence the prolonged life time of light-generated carriers according to the reported. As a result, the $PbI_2-excess$ devices exhibited a higher power conversion efficiency compared to the MAI-excess ones.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.273-273
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• 2014

Quantum-dot sensitized solar cells (QDSCs) are an emerging class of solar cells owing to their easy fabrication, low cost and material diversity. Despite of the fact that the maximum conversion efficiency of QDSCs is still far less than that of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (>12 %), their unique characteristics like Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG), energy band tune-ability and tendency to incorporate multiple co-sensitizers concurrently has made QDs a suitable alternative to expensive dyes for solar cell application. Lead Sulfide (PbS) Quantum dot sensitized solar cells are theoretically proficient enough to have a photo-current density ($J_{sc}$) of $36mA/cm^2$, but practically there are very few reports on photocurrent enhancement in PbS QDSCs. Recently, $Hg^{2+}$ incorporated PbS quantumdots and Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) co-sensitized PbS solarcells are reported to show an improvement in photo-current density ($J_{sc}$). In this study, we explored the efficacy of $In_2S_3$ as an interfacial layer deposited through SILAR process for PbS QDSCs. $In_2S_3$ was chosen as the interfacial layer in order to avoid the usage of hazardous CdS or Mercury (Hg). Herein, the deposition of $In_2S_3$ interfacial layer on $TiO_2$ prior to PbS QDs exhibited a direct enhancement in the photo-current (Isc). Improved photo-absorption as well as interfacial recombination barrier caused by $In_2S_3$ deposition increased the photo-current density ($J_{sc}$) from $13mA/cm^2$ to $15.5mA/cm^2$ for single cycle of $In_2S_3$ deposition. Increase in the number of cycles of $In_2S_3$ deposition was found to deteriorate the photocurrent, however it increased $V_{oc}$ of the device which reached to an optimum value of 2.25% Photo-conversion Efficiency (PCE) for 2 cycles of $In_2S_3$ deposition. Effect of Heat Treatment, Normalized Current Stability, Open Circuit Voltage Decay and Dark IV Characteristics were further measured to reveal the characteristics of device.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose the performance enhancement of solar individual string power generation system using booster power control for voltage compensation. The proposed control method determines the variable voltage for the compensator using direct power control (DPC) modeling applied to motion factor estimation. This method also maintains excellent dynamic response to the characteristics of direct power control (DPC) by calculating the mismatch ratio of the arrestered PV modules. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified through simulation and experiments.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.753-761
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• 2014

We propose a two-step UV irradiation procedure to fabricate polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films by lamination. During the first UV treatment, before lamination, the UV-curable monomers coated on one film substrate are solidified through photo-polymerization as the phase separation between the liquid crystals and the monomers. Introducing an adhesion-enhancement layer on the other plastic substrate and controlling the UV irradiation conditions ensure that UV-induced cross-linkable functional groups remain on the surfaces of the photo-polymerized layers. Thereby, the adhesion stability between the top and bottom films is much improved during a second (post-lamination) UV treatment by further UV-induced cross-linking at the interface. Because the adhesion-enhancement and PDLC layers prepared by the bar-coating process are solidified before lamination, the PDLC droplet distribution and the cell gap between the two plastic substrates remain uniform under the lamination pressure. This ensures that the voltage-controlled light transmittance is uniform across the entire sample.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.88.2-88.2
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• 2010

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have attracted considerable attention on account of their high solar energy-to-conversion efficiencies and low cost processes compared to conventional p-n junction solar cells. The mechanism of DSSC is based on the injection of electrons from the photo excited dyes into the conduction band of the semiconductor electrode. The oxidized dye is reduced by the hole injection into either the hole conductor or the electrolyte. Thus, the light harvesting effect of dye plays an important role in capturing the photons and generating the electron/hole pair, as well as transferring them to the interface of the semiconductor and the electrolyte, respectively. We used the organic fluorescence materials which can absorb short wavelength light and emit longer wavelength region where dye sensitize effectively. In this work, the DSSCs were fabricated with fluorescence materials added $TiO_2$ photo-electrode which were sensitized with metal-free organic dyes. The photovoltaic performances of fluorescence aided DSSCs were compared, and the recombination dark current curves and the incident photon-to-current (IPCE) efficiencies were measured in order to characterize the effects of the additional light harvesting effect in DSSC. Electro-optical measurements were also used to optimize the fluorescence material contents on TiO2 photo-electrode surface for higher conversion efficiency (${\eta}$), fill factor (FF), open-circuit voltage (VOC) and short-circuit current (ISC). The enhanced light harvesting effect by the judicious choice/design of the fluorescence materials and sensitizing dyes permits the enhancement of photovoltaic performance of DSSC.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.471.2-471.2
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• 2014

We demonstrate here that an improvement in precursor film density (green density) leads to a great enhancement in the photovoltaic performance of CuInSe2 (CISe) thin film solar cells fabricated with Cu-In nanoparticle precursor films via chemical solution deposition. A cold-isostatic pressing (CIP) technique was applied to uniformly compress the precursor film over the entire surface (measuring 3~4 cm2) and was found to increase its relative density (particle packing density) by ca. 20%, which resulted in an appreciable improvement in the microstructural features of the sintered CISe film in terms of lower porosity, reduced grain boundaries, and a more uniform surface morphology. The low-bandgap (Eg=1.0 eV) CISe PV devices with the CIP-treated film exhibited greatly enhanced open-circuit voltage (VOC, from 0.265 V to 0.413 V) and fill factor (FF, from 0.34 to 0.55), as compared to the control devices. As a consequence, an almost 3-fold increase in the average power conversion efficiency, 3.0 to 8.2% (with the highest value of 9.02%), was realized without an anti-reflection coating. A diode analysis revealed that the enhanced VOC and FF were essentially attributed to the reduced reverse saturation current density (j0) and diode ideality factor (n). This is associated with the suppressed recombination, likely due to the reduction in recombination sites such as grain/air surfaces (pores), inter-granular interfaces, and defective CISe/CdS junctions in the CIP-treated device. From the temperature dependences of VOC, it was confirmed that the CIP-treated devices suffer less from interface recombination.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2015

In this study, an n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction diode with embedded Ag nanoparticles was fabricated to investigate the possible improvement of light trapping via the surface plasmon resonance effect for solar cell applications. The Ag nanoparticles were fabricated by the physical sputtering method. The acquired current-voltage curves and optical absorption spectra demonstrated that the application of Ag nanoparticles in the n-ZnO/p-Si interface increased the photo current, particularly in specific wavelength regions. The results indicate that the enhancement of the photo current was caused by the surface plasmon resonance effect generated by the Ag nanoparticles. In addition, minority carrier lifetime measurements showed that the recombination losses caused by the Ag nanoparticles were negligible. These results suggest that the embedding of Ag nanoparticles is a powerful method to improve the performance of n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction solar cells.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.2058-2062
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• 2011

The effect of the addition of ionic liquids with four different cations (imidazolium, pyrrolidinium, piperidinium and pyridinium) on the performance of dye-sensitized $TiO_2$ solar cells based on electrolytes containing a t-butylpyridine (TBP) in 3-methoxypropionitrile (MPN) was studied. A total of 18 ionic liquids with mono-, di- and tri-alkyl derivatives were used in the present study, and among them a pyridinium cation with a mono-alkyl group showed better cell efficiency than the others. The best photoelectric conversion efficiency, 7.213%, was obtained using 1-hexylpyridinium iodide with an open-circuit photovoltage ($V_{oc}$) = 0.731 V, a short-circuit photocurrent density ($J_{sc}$) = 16.175 $mA/cm^2$, and a fill factor (ff) = 0.610 under AM1.5 and 100 $mW/cm^2$ illumination.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.220-224
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• 2009

The effect of addition of single and binary additives on the performance of dye-sensitized $TiO_2$ solar cells based on 1,2-dimethyl-3-propylimidazolium iodide (DMPII) in ethylene carbonate (EC) and gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) has been evaluated at different cell temperatures in the $30-120^{\circ}C$ range. The electrolyte containing a single additive, 2-(dimethylamino)-pyridine (DMAP) showed best performance, which showed further enhancement for an electrolyte containing binary additives, DMAP and 5-chloro-1-ethyl-2-methylimidazole (CEMI) in equal molar ratio. The performance of the dye sensitized solar cell (DSC) based on electrolyte containing binary additives were found to be better than an acetonitrile based electrolyte. The dependence of different photovoltaic parameters (Voc, Jsc, ff, n) of the DSC upon temperature has been studied over the $30-120^{\circ}C$ range and only a small decrease in conversion efficiency has been observed. Thus the electrolyte containing binary additives (DMAP, CEMI) in EC/GBL solvent and show better performance in the investigated temperature range ($30-120^{\circ}C$).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.383-383
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• 2011

We fabricated thermal annealing-free polymer solar cells (PSC) by processing with additive and applied to flexible substrates. The 1, 8-Diiodooctane of 3 vol% blended with active solution resulted in enhancement of $J_{SC}$ due to increase of light absorption and hole mobility as improving the crystallinity of P3HT. In addition, the $V_{OC}$ of PSCs with additive was improved by inserting $TiO_2$ layer without any treatment. The $TiO_2$ layer prevented the direct contact between active layer and Al electrode and reduced the charge recombination near Active/Al interface. It was confirmed by calculation of J0 and photo-voltage transient measurement. The power conversion efficiencies of annealing-free PSCs using additive for ITO glass and flexible (ITO PEN) substrate were obtained 3.03% and 2.45%, respectively.