Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Photovoltaics

Photovoltaics represents a new reliable way to substitute tradition fuel energy sources, in order to preserve and keep safe human and environment life. Solar cells are very attractive candidates for clean and renewable power sources and many efforts have been dedicating in order to reduce both cost and size and to improve their efficiency. The importance and potentiality that nanostrucutres and nanotechnology can have in this field is very crucial and great scientific attention is devoted in this way. In particular nanostructures and nanomaterials, thanks to their excellent electronic and optical properties, both consequences of large surface areas and quantum confinement effect, seem to be the right candidates to produce low cost and high efficiency solar cells. By means of ab-initio methods (in the framework of Density Functional Theory and Many Body Perturbation Theory) we study the structural, electronic, optical and transport properties of different types of nanostructures for new generation photovoltaics.

• Doping properties of Si, Ge and SiGe Nanowires
• Si Nanocrystals embedded in SiO2 matrix for tandem solar cells
  
• PbSe and PbS Nanocrystals for hybrid heterojunction assemblies
• TiO₂ Nanocrystals for Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC)

• Dr. Maurizia Palummo, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata"  Roma (Italy)
• Prof. C. Bulutay, Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
• Dr. Riccardo Rurali, Institut de Ciència de Materiales de Barcelona (CSIC), Campus de Bellaterra, Bellaterra, Barcelona (Spain)
• Group of Prof. Angel Rubio, Nano Bio Spectroscopy Group, Dpt. Física de Materiales, Facultad de Químicas and Centro Física de Materiales CSIC-UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain)
• Dr. Letizia Chiodo, CNR-NNL, Lecce (Italy)
• Prof. Olivia Pulci, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata"  Roma (Italy)
• Dr. Margherita Marsili, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata"  Roma (Italy)
• Dr. Mariella Ippolito, CASPUR (Inter-University Consortium for the Application of SuperComputing for Universities and Research) , Roma (Italy)
• Dr. Stefan Janz, Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE, München (Germany)
• Dr. Blas Garrido Fernandez, Department of Electronics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain)
• Dr. Salvatore Lombardo, STMicroelectronics, Catania (Italy)
• Dr. Jan Valenta, Charles, Department of Chemical Physics and Optics, University in Prague, Prague (Czech Republic)
• Prof. Margit Zacharias, IMTEK, University of Freiburg, Freiburg (Germany)
• AZUR SPACE Solar Power GmbH, Heilbronn (Germany)
• Dr. Caterina Summonte, CNR-IMM, Bologna (Italy)
  

• Oxygen vacancy effects on the Schottky barrier height at the Au/TiO₂(110) interface: A first principle study
  I. Marri and S. Ossicini, SOLID STATE COMMUNICATIONS. 2008, 147 Pages: 205-207
  
• Band-offset driven efficiency of the doping of SiGe core-shell nanowires
  M. Amato, S. Ossicini, R. Rurali, NANO LETTERS 2011, 11 Pages: 594 - 598
• Size, oxidation, and strain in small Si/SiO2 nanocrystals
  R. Guerra, E. Degoli, and S. Ossicini PHYSICAL REVIEW. B, CONDENSED MATTER AND MATERIALS PHYSICS. 2009 , 80 Pages: 1553
• Structural, Electronic and Surface Properties of Anatase TiO2 Nanocrystals from First Principles
  A. Iacomino, G. Cantele, D. Ninno, I. Marri, and S. Ossicini PHYSICAL REVIEW. B, CONDENSED MATTER AND MATERIALS PHYSICS. 2008 , 78 Pages: 0754
• Silicon and Germanium Nanostructures for Photovoltaics: Ab-initio results
  S. Ossicini, M. Amato, R. Guerra, M. Palummo, O. Pulci, NANOSCALE RESEARCH LETTERS. 2010, 5 Pages: 1637-1649