Ferroelectric materials for solar energy conversion: photoferroics revisited

By Keith T. Butler, Jarvist Moore Frost, Aron Walsh. 2014

332 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The application of ferroelectric materials (i.e. solids that exhibit spontaneous electric polarisation) in solar cells has a long and controversial history. This includes the first observations of the anomalous photovoltaic effect (APE) and the bulk photovoltaic effect (BPE). The recent successful application of inorganic and hybrid perovskite structured materials (e.g. BiFeO3, CsSnI3, CH3NH3PbI3) in solar cells emphasises that polar semiconductors can be used in conventional photovoltaic architectures. We review developments in this field, with a particular emphasis on the materials known to display the APE/BPE (e.g. ZnS, CdTe, SbSI), and the theoretical explanation. Critical analysis is complemented with first-principles calculation of the underlying electronic structure. In addition to discussing the implications of a ferroelectric absorber layer, and the solid state theory of polarisation (Berry phase analysis), design principles and opportunities for high-efficiency ferroelectric photovoltaics are presented.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e26097d17b01bb686f453d37b19e85d0eeefb76

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Citations in the corpus

Physical aspects of ferroelectric semiconductors for photovoltaic solar energy conversion (2016, background): “Several excellent review articles have been presented in recent years on ferroelectric photovoltaics (Sheu et al., 2012; Yuan et al., 2014; Butler et al., 2015; Fan et al., 2015a; Akbashev et al., 2016; Paillard et al., 2016) and on the physical properties of ferroelectric materials (Naber et al.,…”
Identifying defect-tolerant semiconductors with high minority-carrier lifetimes: beyond hybrid lead halide perovskites (2015, methodology): “[74–77] SbSI and SbSeI have recently been identified for their potential applications as photoferroelectrics,[78] however those in the paraelectric phase may still demonstrate large Born”
Perovskite Solar Cells: Progress and Advancements (2016, background): “The following mechanisms (Figure 9c) are found to govern the hysteresis phenomenon in perovskite solar cells: (i) Ferroelectric polarization [94,97,98]; (ii) Ion migration [99–101]; (iii) Charge trapping [102,103]; and (iv) capacitive effects [104].”