Engineering hollow electrodes for hybrid solar cells for efficient light harvesting and carrier collection

The organic-inorganic hybrid solar cell (HSC) is regarded as a promising candidate for third-generation solar cells. Currently, their performance hovers at a low level due to the contradiction between the exciton diffusion and light absorption of the organic layer. In the present work, we provide an efficient solution by designing a hollow electrode for the HSC, which contains CdS nanoflake arrays (NFAs) coated with a thin organic active layer and a roof-like metallic electrode. The hollow electrode facilitates light absorption, charge separation, and hole transportation simultaneously, and as a result, the novel HSC outperforms traditional solid and core-shell HSCs. Our work demonstrates that the reasonable design of the electrode structure is of great importance for improving the power conversion efficiency of HSCs.