New nanostructured thin film shows promise for efficient solar energy conversion

January 9, 2008 | Source: PhysOrg.com

A hybrid material that combines two nanotechnology methods for engineering solar cell materials–thin metal oxide films and quantum dots–has better performance than either method has alone, University of California, Santa Cruz researchers have found.

The nanocomposite’s “incident photon to current conversion efficiency” (IPCE) was as much as three times greater than the sum of the IPCEs for the two other materials.