A promising patterned mesoscopic CuInS₂ solar cell

Bulk heterojunction (BHJ) film is potential for the solar cells based on the photon-absorbers with a limited charge diffusion length. Here, for the first time, a patterned mesoporous film featuring the voids surrounded by the mesoporous walls of TiO₂ nanoparticles is created for loading CuInS₂ nanoparticles to prepare CuInS₂-based BHJ film, resulting in a patterned mesoscopic CuInS₂ solar cell with an efficiency of 6.23%. The voids are derived from the phase-separated poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) aggregates during spin-casting the mixture of TiO₂ slurry and PEG. It is demonstrated that the patterned mesoscopic CuInS₂ solar cell is much more efficient than conventional/non-patterned counterpart device.