ABSTRACT
Nowadays, the latest technological innovations demand energy conversion/storage devices and they have accelerated the consumption of energy. So, this requires to develop the sustainable and environment-friendly devices that can harvest energy most prominently and reduce the usage of fossil fuels. In this regard, the most inventive renewable energy devices are supercapacitors, fuel cells, photovoltaic materials, thermoelectric materials, lithium-ion batteries, and so on. Solar cells are a good candidate for clean energy. Researches are working on solar cells to develop the highest efficiency, environment-friendly, and non-toxic solar cell devices. Photovoltaic solar cells are promising candidates that can harvest energy directly from sunlight and are known as photovoltaic devices. Recently, chalcogenides-based 2D nanomaterials have attracted the attention of scientists as they have emerged as very promising materials for solar cell applications. The reason behind this is that they can solve both toxicity and stability problems simultaneously faced by conventional solar cells. There are different classes of chalcogenides-based 2D nanomaterials. Over the past years, metal chalcogenides (metal monochalcogenides, metal dichalcogenides) and transition metal chalcogenides have experienced important progress that is leading to the discovery of very promising compounds and derivatives for solar cell applications. This is because of the advantages that chalcogenide-based 2D nanomaterials technology offers like applicability onto flexible substrates, high stability and aesthetical appearance, reliability, monolithic deposition, superior temperature coefficient, and potential in tandem applications. This book chapter will present a detailed review of II-VI chalcogenides-based 2D nanomaterials for solar cell application. Moreover, types of various II-VI chalcogenides-based nanomaterials, their recent synthesis progress, optical properties, and their potentials in solar cells like hybrid inorganic nanostructure-conductive polymer composite solar cells, all-inorganic thin-film nanostructure solar cells, and quantum-dots-sensitized solar cells will be discussed.
