Photovoltaic Heterojunctions of Fullerenes with MoS2 and WS2 Monolayers

First-principles calculations are performed to explore the geometry, bonding, and electronic structures of six ultrathin photovoltaic heterostructures consisting of pristine and B- or N-doped fullerenes and MoS2 or WS2 monolayers. The fullerenes prefer to be attached with a hexagon parallel to the monolayer, where B and N favor proximity to the monolayer. The main electronic properties of the subsystems stay intact, suggesting weak interfacial interaction. Both the C60/MoS2 and C60/WS2 systems show type-II band alignments. However, the built-in potential in the former case is too small to effectively drive electron-hole separation across the interface, whereas the latter system is predicted to show good photovoltaic performance. Unfortunately, B and N doping destroys the type-II band alignment on MoS2 and preserves it only in one spin channel on WS2, which is unsuitable for excitonic solar cells. Our results suggest that the C60/WS2 system is highly promising for excitonic solar cells.

Electronic Structure of Semiconducting and Metallic Tubes in TiO2/Carbon Nanotube Heterojunctions: Density Functional Theory Calculations

The electronic structure of the TiO2(110) surface interfaced with both a semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotube (CNT) was investigated by density functional theory. Our simulations rationalized visible light photocatalytic activity of CNT/TiO2 hybrid materials higher than that under ultraviolent irradiation and showed that the photoactivity of a semiconducting CNT decorating TiO2 is better than that of the metallic CNT/TiO2 system due to efficient charge separation across the interface. This suggests that semiconducting CNT/TiO2 could be a potential photovoltaic material. In contrast, strong interaction between a metallic CNT and TiO2 leads to large charge transfer. Such charge transfer reduces the built-in potential, in turn resulting in inefficient charge separation. Functionalizing the metallic CNT with a small platinum cluster can increase the built-in potential and drive charge separation. These observations indicate that the CNT/TiO2 interface can be a potential photovoltaic material by a metal cluster decorating a CNT despite a real tube being composed of the mixture of metallic and semiconducting CNTs.