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Organic-inorganic halide perovskite solar cells have enormous potential to impact the existing photovoltaic industry. As realizing a higher conversion efficiency of the solar cell is still the most crucial task, a great number of schemes were proposed to minimize the carrier loss by optimizing the electrical properties of the perovskite solar cells. Here, we focus on another significant aspect that is to minimize the light loss by optimizing the light management to gain a high efficiency for perovskite solar cells. In our scheme, the slotted and inverted prism structured SiO2 layers are adopted to trap more light into the solar cells, and a better transparent conducting oxide layer is employed to reduce the parasitic absorption. For such an implementation, the efficiency and the serviceable angle of the perovskite solar cell can be promoted impressively. This proposal would shed new light on developing the high-performance perovskite solar cells.

By means of extensive ab initio calculations, a new two-dimensional (2D) atomic material tin selenide monolayer (coined as tinselenidene) is predicted to be a semiconductor with an indirect gap (1.45 eV) and a high hole mobility (of order 10000 cm2V-1S-1), and will bear an indirect-direct gap transition under a rather low strain (<0.5 GPa). Tinselenidene has a very small Young's modulus (20-40 GPa) and an ultralow lattice thermal conductivity (<3 Wm-1K-1 at 300 K), making it probably the most flexible and most heat-insulating material in known 2D atomic materials. In addition, tinseleniden has a large negative Poisson's ratio of -0.17, thus could act as a 2D auxetic material. With these intriguing properties, tinselenidene could have wide potential applications in thermoelectrics, nanomechanics and optoelectronics., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

We systematically investigated the geometric, electronic and thermoelectric (TE) properties of bulk black phosphorus (BP) under strain. The hinge-like structure of BP brings unusual mechanical responses such as anisotropic Young's modulus and negative Poisson's ratio. A sensitive electronic structure of BP makes it transform among metal, direct and indirect semiconductors under strain. The maximal figure of merit $ZT$ of BP is found to be 0.72 at $800\,\mathrm{K}$ that could be enhanced to 0.87 by exerting an appropriate strain, revealing BP could be a potential medium-high temperature TE material. Such strain-induced enhancements of TE performance are often observed to occur at the boundary of the direct-indirect band gap transition, which can be attributed to the increase of degeneracy of energy valleys at the transition point. By comparing the structure of BP with SnSe, a family of potential TE materials with hinge-like structure are suggested. This study not only exposes various novel properties of BP under strain, but also proposes effective strategies to seek for better TE materials., Comment: 6 figures. Supplemental Information is available in Scientific Reports and also involved in this source package

Superstructures of cubic and hexagonal diamonds (h- and c-diamond) comprising a family of stable diamond-like $sp^3$ hybridized novel carbon allotropes are proposed, which are referred to as U$_n$-carbon where $n \geq 2$ denotes the number of structural layers in a unit cell. The conventional h- and c-diamond are included in this family as members with $n=2$ and 3, respectively. U$_n$-carbon ($n=4-6$), which are unveiled energetically and thermodynamically more stable than h-diamond and possess remarkable kinetic stabilities, are shown to be insulators with indirect gaps of $5.6 \sim 5.8$ eV, densities of $ 3.5 \sim 3.6$ g/cm$^3$, bulk modulus of $4.3 \sim 4.4 \times 10^{2}$ GPa, and Vickers hardness of $92.9 \sim 97.5$ GPa even harder than h- and c-diamond. The simulated x-ray diffraction and Raman spectra are presented for experimental characterization. These new structures of carbon would have a compelling impact in physics, chemistry, materials science and geophysics.

The geometrical, electronic, and magnetic properties of twisted zigzag-edged graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) and novel graphene M\"obius strips (GMS) are systematically investigated using first-principles density functional calculations. The structures of ZGNRs and GMS are optimized, and their stabilities are examined. The molecular energy levels and the spin polarized density of states are calculated. It is found that for twisted ZGNRs, the atomic bonding energy decreases quadratically with the increase of the twisted angle, and the HOMO-LUMO gap are varying in a sine-like behavior with the twisted angle. The calculated spin densities reveal that the ZGNRs and GMS have antiferromagnetic ground states, which persist during the twisting. The spin flips on the zigzag edges of GMS are observed at some positions., Comment: 22 pages,6 figures

By means of the first-principles calculations combined with the tight-binding approximation, the strain-induced semiconductor-semimetal transition in graphdiyne is discovered. It is shown that the band gap of graphdiyne increases from 0.47 eV to 1.39 eV with increasing the biaxial tensile strain, while the band gap decreases from 0.47 eV to nearly zero with increasing the uniaxial tensile strain, and Dirac cone-like electronic structures are observed. The uniaxial strain-induced changes of the electronic structures of graphdiyne come from the breaking of geometrical symmetry that lifts the degeneracy of energy bands. The properties of graphdiyne under strains are disclosed different remarkably from that of graphene., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

We study a versatile structurally favorable periodic $sp^2$-bonded carbon atomic planar sheet with $C_{4v}$ symmetry by means of the first-principles calculations. This carbon allotrope is composed of carbon octagons and squares with two bond lengths and is thus dubbed as octagraphene. It is a semimetal with the Fermi surface consisting of one hole and one electron pocket, whose low-energy physics can be well described by a tight-binding model of $\pi$-electrons. Its Young's modulus, breaking strength and Poisson's ratio are obtained to be 306 $N/m$, 34.4 $N/m$ and 0.13, respectively, which are close to those of graphene. The novel sawtooth and armchair carbon nanotubes as well as unconventional fullerenes can also be constructed from octagraphene. It is found that the Ti-absorbed octagraphene can be allowed for hydrogen storage with capacity around 7.76 wt%.