Hi Farhan,

Yes, that's definitely. This Quantum Dots (QD) solar cell has potential to develop more. Currently it shows above 11% of PCE for Lead sulfide based. If you see NREL chart (updated), you can also see there is perovskite QD achieved above 13% of PCE.

Moreover, this QD SC has long air-storage stability reported for a year test.

You can read this below article.

Article Highly Efficient Air-Stable Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cell...

Best!

Here 11.3% PbS QD based SC.

Article Hybrid organic-inorganic inks flatten the energy landscape i...

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v13/n8/abs/nmat3984.html

Thank you Sir. Your response and related papers were very helpful.

I am looking to work on QD solar cells in future

Yes, Mr Farhan.

Good luck for your research.

Best!

I do not feel QD solar cell in general is a promising approach for PV, because it fundamentally lacks the much needed good electronic conductivity. One could view a QD solar cell as a bulk solar cell broken down into pieces. No QD solar cell even deliver better performance than its bulk counterpart (unless the bulk cell was very poorly made). If one would like to use nano-structures for PV, some sort of nanowire based approach makes more sense, because it preserves good conductivity in one dimension.

Hi Dr Yong Zhang,

Yes, you're right. This QD material has drawbacks as well. But nothing is perfect materials for PV technolog. They have advantages and disadvantages each materials. However in some points, QD based solar cells are still promising material to further develop for future PV technology. One of reason is processable soultion process with efficiency ~12% for PbS QD based and >13% for perovskite QD based. Moreover this PbS QD SC shows better storage stability (above 6 months reported in Nat. Mater.) without any encapsulated system compare to other emerging SC e.g. Perovskite and Organic SC. Unfortunately, this PbS QD can be prepared using RT technique with efficiency above 10%. It will helpfull for supress production cost and can be prepare for flexible substrate for certain purpose.

Best!

Here 13.4% Perovskite QD. You can check this article.

Article Enhanced mobility CsPbI 3 quantum dot arrays for record-effi...

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I would second Mr. Yong, that the materials with very fine structures has grain boundaries that may impede the motion of the mobile charge carriers and appreciably reduce their mobility. Also, the boundaries of the quantum dots may be not ideally passivated, therefore, the surface of the nanoparicles may be act as recombination centers leading to the recombination of a part of the generated electron hole pairs. This will reduce the external quantum efficiency.

The positive sides of the quantum dots is tun ability of the their energy gay and therefore can be made to absorb much more radiation than a single energy gap material. The second pro factor is the materials become direct band gap when they in form of quantum dot. This will lead to a much smaller thickness to absorb the incident solar c radiation.

Specially this effect can compensate for the low mobility since the mobile charges do not need too long distances to travel to the electrodes.

Also, the quantity of material required to build the absorption efficient solar cell will be consequently appreciably smaller rendering such solar cells material economical.

The QD solar cells needs long way of research to be competing.

For more information please follow the link: Article Quantum Dot Solar Cells. The Next Big Thing in Photovoltaics

Best wishes

I definitely agree with Prof Zekry.

This QD SC still needs long way of research to be competing to other commercial SC nowadays. However in my opinion it can be very useful for certain purpose application such as portable and flexibel SC battery charger. I think people who are working in this area go to that direction and can compete with Organic SC as well.

Best.

Hi Farhan,

The most distinct property of quantum dot solar cells is their quantum effects, for instance, the MEG originates from the impact ionization effect, leading to a high efficiency of 44% in theory.

To fully utilize of this unique property, the main limitation, I think, originates from the immature nano technology, and it seems a long way to go.

Best.

Zhiqiang