Print Email Facebook Twitter Highly efficient carrier multiplication in PbS nanosheets Title Highly efficient carrier multiplication in PbS nanosheets Author Aerts, M. Bielewicz, T. Klinke, C. Grozema, F.C. Houtepen, A.J. Schins, J.M. Siebbeles, L.D.A. Faculty Applied Sciences Department ChemE/Chemical Engineering Date 2014-04-30 Abstract Semiconductor nanocrystals are promising for use in cheap and highly efficient solar cells. A high efficiency can be achieved by carrier multiplication (CM), which yields multiple electron-hole pairs for a single absorbed photon. Lead chalcogenide nanocrystals are of specific interest, since their band gap can be tuned to be optimal to exploit CM in solar cells. Interestingly, for a given photon energy CM is more efficient in bulk PbS and PbSe, which has been attributed to the higher density of states. Unfortunately, these bulk materials are not useful for solar cells due to their low band gap. Here we demonstrate that two-dimensional PbS nanosheets combine the band gap of a confined system with the high CM efficiency of bulk. Interestingly, in thin PbS nanosheets virtually the entire excess photon energy above the CM threshold is used for CM, in contrast to quantum dots, nanorods and bulk lead chalcogenide materials. Subject physical sciencesnanotechnologyoptical physics To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2f646b76-f0b5-4d28-a25b-56222edbcb5d DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4789 Publisher Nature Publishing Group ISSN 2041-1723 Source Nature Communications, 5, 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights (c) 2013 Macmillan Publishers LimitedCreative Coomons BY - This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Files PDF Aerts_2014.pdf 589.95 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:2f646b76-f0b5-4d28-a25b-56222edbcb5d/datastream/OBJ/view