(138b) Directed Synthesis of Lead Selenide – Titania Core-Shell Nanowire Heterostructures for High-Efficiency Low-Cost Solar Cells

The need for new sources of energy has been of great concern to the scientific community over the past few decades. Due to this rise in interest, new and emerging technologies in efficient, clean energy conversion have been developed. Among these developments lie innovative and non-quintessential concepts of photovoltaic materials, which include photovoltaic nanocrystalline devices that have recently grown in popularity due to their highly efficient multi-exciton processes. We present a novel, high-efficiency, low-cost, all inorganic Lead selenide-Titania (PbSe /TiO₂) nanowire heterostructure material synthesis for photovoltaic applications. PbSe Quantum dot (QD) nanocrystals that have been uniformly distributed within a TiO₂ support with high connectivity for highly efficient charge carrier flow and electron-hole pair separation. We have characterized this material by High-resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HR-TEM), Electron Diffraction (ED), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX), and UV-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis).