Author: Daniel David Tune
Tune, Daniel David, 2013 Single walled carbon nanotube photovoltaics, Flinders University, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences
Terms of Use: This electronic version is (or will be) made publicly available by Flinders University in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. You may use this material for uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material and/or you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact copyright@flinders.edu.au with the details.
The environmental and climatic drivers for massively increased use of photovoltaics for energy generation can hardly be understated. Due to the high cost of energy from the current generation of silicon-based photovoltaics relative to that from highly subsidised fossil fuels, there is great interest in finding alternative materials and device architectures for light harvesting applications. Single walled carbon nanotubes are an allotrope of carbon with some unique electrical and optical properties which make them promising as various elements of photovoltaic systems. Exploring and developing methods of harnessing their properties is thus desirable and much work has already been done in this emerging field. Before the work presented in this thesis began in 2009, carbon nanotubes had been employed in various roles in different types of solar cells including as transparent electrodes, as additives to improve charge dissociation and transport in organic bulk heterojunctions and the titania of dye sensitised solar cells, and as contributing or scaffolding elements of donor-acceptor type photoelectrochemical systems with porphyrins, quantum dots and more. Throughout this thesis, the results of new experimental and theoretical investigations into some further applications of single walled carbon nanotubes in photovoltaics will be presented, with particular focus on carbon nanotube-silicon solar cells.
Keywords: Cabon nanotubes,conducting polymers,materials science,modelling,photovoltaics,silicon,software,solar cells
Subject: Nanotechnology thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2013
School: School of Chemical and Physical Sciences
Supervisor: Joseph G. Shapter