Thin film electrodes are being heavily investigated in photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cells. Thin film electrodes have many advantages. They are easy to manufacture, demand small amounts of starting materials and non-costly. Due to their suitable band gap values (ranging 1.5 – 2.0 eV) metal cholcogenides (MX: M = Cd, Cu, Zn etc; X = S, Se, Te) are among the most attractive systems. However, metal chalcogenides can be hazardous to environment due to toxicity of the elements used. Therefore, careful management is needed while considering such materials at wide scale. One specific issue is possibility to recycle metal-chalcogenide solar cells. In this presentation, we describe our efforts in recycling different types of metal-chalcogenide based film electrodes.  Both chemical bath deposition and electrochemical deposition methods are described. The results show that metal-chalcogenide film electrodes can be recycled to yield electrodes with no loss of efficiency. Moreover, simple can be used to further enhance PEC characteristics of the recycled film electrodes, such as controlled annealing and cooling rate. High conversion efficiency and stability have already been manifested here.  Results, discussions and models will all be presented in this keynote.

Key words:  Recycling; Metal-chalcogenide film electrodes; PEC.

Conference Title

2. International Conference on Life and Engineering Sciences (ICOLES 2019)و

Conference Country

Turkey

Conference Date

June 27, 2019 - June 29, 2019

Conference Sponsor

Istanbul Medeniyet University

Additional Info

Conference Website