Role of Electrochemical Techniques for Photovoltaic and Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

Electrochemistry forms the base of large-scale production of various materials, encompassing numerous applications in metallurgical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and material science. This field is important for energy harvesting applications, especially supercapacitors (SCs) and photovoltaic (PV) devices. This review examines various electrochemical techniques employed to fabricate and characterize PV devices and SCs. Fabricating these energy harvesting devices is carried out by electrochemical methods, including electroreduction, electrocoagulation, sol-gel process, hydrothermal growth, spray pyrolysis, template-assisted growth, and electrodeposition. The characterization techniques used are cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, photoelectrochemical characterization, galvanostatic charge-discharge, and I–V curve. A study on different recently reported materials is also presented to analyze their performance in various energy harvesting applications regarding their efficiency, fill factor, power density, and energy density. In addition, a comparative study of electrochemical fabrication techniques with others (including physical vapor deposition, mechanical milling, laser ablation, and centrifugal spinning) has been conducted. The various challenges of electrochemistry in PVs and SCs are also highlighted. This review also emphasizes the future perspectives of electrochemistry in energy harvesting applications.

Keywords:

• Electrochemical characterization technique
• electrochemical synthesis
• performance evaluation
• photovoltaics
• supercapacitors

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time due to technical limitations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JK Science Technology & Innovation Council, Department of Science and Technology, JKUT.