Indium solar energy conversion

G. Hodes, L. Thompson, J. DuBow, and K. Rajeshwar, Heterojunction sihcon/indium tin oxide photoelectrodes Development of stable systems in aqueous electrolytes and their applicability to solar energy conversion and storage, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 105, 324, 1983. 

Indium(III)-selenide exhibits a complex hexagonal structure making it possible for ions to diffuse in and alter the physical properties without substantially altering the host structure [139]. Thus, the compound can be employed as a cathode in microbatteries and as a solid solution electrode in microcapacitors.[139] Indium selenide, IniSe.i, is also a promising candidate for solar energy conversion [139]. The compound can be prepared by the CVD of In(SePh)3 at 550°C [138]. 

Indium phosphide has been a successful material in the preparation of solid-state, photovoltaic, and photoelectrocatalytic electrochemical solar cells [237-240]. Photovoltaic soUd-state solar cells reach single-junction efHciencies above 24% [237]. When used as a photocathode in photoelectrochemical solar energy conversion, the material has shown excellent stability [239], related to the unique surface chemistry of the polar InP(lll) A-face that exposes In atoms only [240]. The photoelectrochemical conditioning of single-crystalline p-type InP with the aim of preparing efficient and stable photoelectrochemical solar cells for photovoltaic and photoelectrocatalytic operation is described in the following and the induced surface transformations are analyzed employing a variety of surface-sensitive methods. 

A final class of materials is the optically transparent electrodes based on metal oxides (e.g., indium-tin oxide, ITO). These materials are very popular in the field of energy conversion, as a support for Dye-Sensitive Solar Cells, but the group of Heinemann developed at the end of the 1990s a spectroelectrochemical sensing method based on such transparent electrodes. The method is defined as the coupling of an electrochemical detection with a spectroscopic analysis." " This approach allows for multimode selectivity and is usually applied in the presence of surface modification for preconcentration of the analyte. More recently, porous and optically transparent electrodes have been prepared and applied for combined spectroscopic and electrochemical analysis" " which should lead in a near future to further developments in analytical sciences applied to the environment. 

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