Direct solar energy conversion and storage through coupling between photoelectrochemical and ferroelectric effects

Harvesting and storing solar energy has become more and more important. Current solid-state photovoltaic cells and conventional photoelectrochemical cells are not capable of directly storing the converted energy, which has to be facilitated by connecting to external storing devices. We demonstrate a device architecture that can convert and store solar energy in the electrical form within an intrinsically single structure. Mobile charge is internally stored, based on the coupling between photoelectrochemical and ferroelectric effects. The tested device architecture can be photo-charged under 1000 W/m(2) of white light to an open-circuit voltage of 0.47V with a capacity of 37.62 mC/cm(2). After removal of the light source, the mobile charge stored lasts more than 8 hours, and the open-circuit output voltage lasts more than 24 hours. Copyright 2011 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. [doi:10.1063/1.3651084]