Hybrid solar cell on a carbon fiber

In this work, a method to assemble nanoscale hybrid solar cells in the form of a brush of radially oriented CdS nanowire crystals around a single carbon fiber is demonstrated for the first time. A solar cell was assembled on a carbon fiber with a diameter of ~5-10 μm which served as a core electrode; inorganic CdS nanowire crystals and organic dye or polymer layers were successively deposited on the carbon fiber as active components resulting in a core-shell photovoltaic structure. Polymer, dye-sensitized, and inverted solar cells have been prepared and compared with their analogues made on the flat indium-tin oxide electrode.