Material transparent to infraredradiation

a Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R.China E-mail: bianzq@pku.edu.cn

Transparent solar cells are very useful in making transparent electrical power supplies and tandem devices. We report the fabrication of semi-transparent polymer solar cells by replacing conventional metal electrode with a carbon nanotube film. The solar cells can be illuminated at both front and back sides, with power conversion efficiencies (up to 2.5%) comparable to cells using metal electrodes. The solar cells are highly transparent in near-infrared region, with an optical transmittance of nearly 80% in the range of 670 nm to 1.2 μm, and maintain a transmittance of above 60% through 1.2 to 2.5 μm. We further constructed a tandem structure with two subcells operating separately, in which the back cell receives infrared light transmitted through the front cell. Our infrared-transparent solar cells possess multiple functions such as serving as a light filter to drive a CdSe nanobelt photo-sensor with enhanced wavelength selectivity.

Infrared transparentmaterials chart

X. Xia, S. Wang, Y. Jia, Z. Bian, D. Wu, L. Zhang, A. Cao and C. Huang, J. Mater. Chem., 2010, 20, 8478 DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02406F

Material transparent to infraredwavelength

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Material transparent to infraredlight

c Department of Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China E-mail: anyuan@pku.edu.cn

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b Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing Technology and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China