Development of metal oxide heterostructures for photovoltaic and solar cell applications

Solar cells and photovoltaic devices are based overall on metal oxides and heterostructures. This is a technology in advance, with remarkable interest due to its low impact on the environment in comparison to the most used forms of energy conversion. Additionally, the oxides are most abundant, easy, and less expensive to obtain compared to other materials for such applications. Although the metal oxide–based photovoltaic devices show, usually, low conversion efficiency, some studies have shown capable of obtaining PCE higher than 10% or 20% using enhanced heterostructures. This chapter presented a review of the state of the art of metal oxide heterostructures applied mainly in photovoltaic devices and solar cells. A special focus is given to studies related to some of the most applied materials, such as ZnO, ZnO:Al, (AZO), and TiO2, and to heterostructures based on metallic oxides of copper, zinc, magnesium, vanadium, etc.