In these photovoltaic

devices, the HBH structure enables a highly efficient exciton splitting or charge transferring through an interpenetrated nanoscale heterojunction distributed in the whole active layer. If selleck inhibitor optimization treatment to phase separation is carried out or efficient photovoltaic materials are adopted, not only the exciton splitting and charge transferring but also charge collection will benefit from the formation of interpenetrated and continuous transportation networks for holes and electrons [3–5]. Being profited from the HBH structure, the efficiency of organic hybrid solar cells has been remarkably improved [2, 6, 7]. During the research of thin film photovoltaic devices, it was found that HBH structure is not only a patent for

organic or organic/inorganic hybrid photovoltaics. Inorganic thin film solar cells based on nanocrystals or quantum dots (QDs) also found their next step to better performance by introducing the HBH nanostructure mentioned above [8]. Recently, it was found that the performance of PbS quantum dot solar cells was remarkably enhanced under a hybrid structure composed of PbS quantum dots and Bi2S3 nanoparticles [9]. The key factor bringing such an exciting enhancement was attributed to a prolonged charge lifetime which allowed BTK inhibitor molecular weight efficient charge separation and transport based on the formation of a nanoscale HBH. Another similar structure was fabricated by infiltrating PbS quantum dots into a porous TiO2 layer to form a depleted bulk heterojunction which was found beneficial to exciton splitting [10]. In these devices, an electron donor-acceptor (D-A) model was introduced to discuss the work mechanism

of solar cells with a HBH structure. Keeping this in mind, we think that it is reasonable to form interpenetrated and continuous ifenprodil two phases for the highly efficient exciton splitting and charge transportation. For this consideration, a novel HBH nanostructured solar cell was obtained by introducing CdTe nanotetrapod (NT)/CdSe QD hybrids as the photoactive layer and CdTe NTs as the anode buffer layer. Ligand treatment to the bulk heterojunction film composed of NT/QD hybrids ensures an efficient charge transferring and thereafter transporting in interpenetrated pathways. Remarkable photovoltaic performance is obtained with this hybrid composition. The novel HBH structure is commonly applicable and beneficial to other quantum dot-based solar cells with flexible, low-cost, and solution-processable manufacturing process. Methods Synthesis of CdTe NTs and CdSe QDs CdTe NTs and CdSe QDs were synthesized according to the procedure in the literature [11] with some modifications.