Track: Energy Efficiency
Abstract
The use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a photovoltaic cell could have significant extrapolations on the commercial solar cell market. Two interrelated directions within CNT’s research area are crucial to the ultimate success of the following endeavor accordingly: 1) structural engineering of CNTs (Separation, purification, and enrichment; 2) CNTs integration and a hole selective contact into solar cells as a photosensitive element. All these topics have experienced tremendous growth over past the 20 years. CNTs are an ideal two-dimensional material formed of sp2-hybridized carbon due to their unique physical, thermal, and optical properties. The high robustness and high transparency of CNTs in the broad wavelength region make them a very attractive material for many components that are used in solar cells. Conventional solar cell efficiency is less than 30%. The goal of this work is to improve the efficiency of the solar cell by over 80% by applying the chirality engineering of the CNTs with a purification rate of above 98%. Therefore, this research is proposed the different structures of CNTs (SWCNTs and MWCNTs) have different radii and chirality to improve the efficiency of the solar cell. This proposed work will start by developing a mathematical model and verifying the results by using CAD Tools like COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB. The model will help to harvest the energy near to infrared that will be a milestone in the renewable energy sector by introducing the CNT-based solar cells having an efficiency of 80 % from the research lab to the end-user technology.