Designing New Materials for Solar Energy Conversion

After introducing general aspects of photovoltaics this talk will illustrate how spectroscopy with soft X-rays can help developing new materials and new designs for solar cells. Starting with the most general layout of a solar cell, the focus will be on combining its three components with atomic precision into one molecular complex. A dream experiment will be discussed where the movement of photo-generated carriers through such a complex is tracked in real time at the latest X-ray sources.