Strategies for improving light-harvesting efficiencies of photo-batteries

光电池是一种收集和存储太阳能的新解决方案，相同的电极材料同时收集并存储太阳光。这些设备直到最近才获得了吸引力，因此从太阳能电池和电池设计的角度来看，都没有得到很好的优化。因此，这些设备表现出有限的能量转换效率、容量和循环寿命。然而，这些材料在为离网传感器和其他自主设备供电以及为发展中国家的农村社区提供能源解决方案方面非常有希望。到目前为止，这些光电池主要是从电荷存储的角度来考虑的，而不是从捕光的角度来考虑，这是它们效率低(不到1%)的原因之一。这个项目将在MIDI项目的基础上，通过从太阳能电池和光催化和光探测器领域的纳米技术社区开发的概念中汲取灵感，从根本上重新审视光电池是如何设计的。染料敏化太阳能电池特别令人感兴趣，因为它们有阳极、阴极和电解液，就像电池一样-所以这类太阳能电池的设计线索将有助于开发光电池。此外，染料敏化太阳能电池还提供了一种解决方案，用于制造具有较大表面积的厚电极，这对电池和太阳能电池的运行都很重要。最后，一些用于染料敏化太阳能电池的材料，如烧结的二氧化钛和氧化锌纳米颗粒，被用作锂离子电池的活性负极材料。由于染料敏化太阳能电池和锂离子电池阳极之间的协同作用，我们预计基于染料敏化太阳能电池设计规则的光电池将实现更好的能量转换效率，这是目前锂离子光电池最重要的吸引力。

Photo-batteries are a new solution for harvesting and storing solar energy, where the same electrode material simultaneously harvests sun light and stores it. These devices have only recently gained traction and are therefore poorly optimised both from a solar cell and a battery design perspective. As a result, these devices show limited energy conversion efficiencies, capacities, and cycle life. Nevertheless, these materials are extremely promising for powering off-grid sensors and other autonomous devices as well as to provide energy solutions for rural communities in developing countries. Till now, these photo-batteries have been considered primarily from the viewpoint of charge storage, but not from the angle of light-harvesting which is one of the reasons for their low efficiencies (less than 1%). This project will fundamentally revisit how the photo-batteries are designed by building on the midi-project by drawing inspiration from solar cells and concepts developed by the nanotech community in photo-catalysis and photodetectors. Dye-sensitized solar cells are of particular interest, because of they have an anode, cathode, and electrolyte, just like a battery - so design cues from this class of solar cells will be useful for developing photo-batteries. In addition, dye-sensitized solar cells also provide a solution for creating thick electrodes with a large surface area, which is important for both the battery and solar cell operation. Finally, some of the materials used in dye-sensitized solar cells such a sintered TiO2 and ZnO nanoparticles are used as active anode materials in Li-Ion batteries. Because of the synergies between dye-sensitized solar cells and Li-Ion battery anodes, we anticipate that photo-batteries building on design rules for dye-sensitized solar cells will achieve better energy conversion efficiencies, which is currently the most important draw-back of Li-Ion photo-batteries.