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Photovoltaic characteristics of the prepared solar cells Fig. 7 Reflectance spectra of three prepared solar cell configurations
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The present study focuses on the employment of TiO2 (titanium dioxide) film as an anti-reflective coating (ARC) on thin crystalline silicon (Si)-based solar cells along with the incorporation of plasmonic silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) on its front surface having ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) as top metal contact. The response of solar cell has been studie...
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... The variation in reaction time has a significant impact on the crystallinity structure of SOL/ZnO NCs, as well as their optical properties. Light trapping techniques involve approaches such as reducing the reflection of incident light [101], enhancing light absorption [102], and altering the optical behaviour of the thin film made of NCs by aligning the refractive index, localized plasmon resonances [103], and directing incident light into guided modes [104]. ...
This study offers a green synthesis of zinc oxide nanocrystals (ZnO NCs) using natural salvia officinalis (SOL) leaves extracted without the need for chemical surfactants from a bottom-up approach. The ZnO NCs have been fabricated through a thermal chemical solution deposition (CSD) route at 85 °C on a glass substrate. FESEM images show the repeatability of a three-dimensional (3D) ZnO NCs nanoyarn-like structure versus reaction time variation that is assembled by many uniform ZnO of crescent-shaped nanoslices and nanoplates. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) profile exhibits a positive correlation between crystallinity and reaction time. The optical properties of the SOL/ZnO NCs represent the UV-vis absorption in the blue region with a bandgap (E g) of 2.16 eV and a high photolu-minescence (PL) emission intensity with a peak at 572.7 nm and yellow-red shift emission after a 16-h reaction time. The ability to fabricate SOL/ZnO NC nano-yarn-like structures repeatedly using an eco-friendly green synthesis of natural SOL phytochemicals with excellent optical properties is encouraging for future photovoltaic applications.
... The variation in reaction time has a significant impact on the crystallinity structure of SOL/ZnO NCs, as well as their optical properties. Light trapping techniques involve approaches such as reducing the reflection of incident light [101], enhancing light absorption [102], and altering the optical behaviour of the thin film made of NCs by aligning the refractive index, localized plasmon resonances [103], and directing incident light into guided modes [104]. ...
This study ofers a green synthesis of zinc oxide nanocrystals (ZnO NCs) using
natural salvia ofcinalis (SOL) leaves extracted without the need for chemical
surfactants from a botom-up approach. The ZnO NCs have been fabricated
through a thermal chemical solution deposition (CSD) route at 85 °C on a glass
substrate. FESEM images show the repeatability of a three-dimensional (3D) ZnO
NCs nanoyarn-like structure versus reaction time variation that is assembled by
many uniform ZnO of crescent-shaped nanoslices and nanoplates. The X-ray
difraction (XRD) profle exhibits a positive correlation between crystallinity and
reaction time. The optical properties of the SOL/ZnO NCs represent the UV–vis
absorption in the blue region with a bandgap (Eg) of 2.16 eV and a high photoluminescence (PL) emission intensity with a peak at 572.7 nm and yellow–red shift
emission after a 16-h reaction time. The ability to fabricate SOL/ZnO NC nano�yarn-like structures repeatedly using an eco-friendly green synthesis of natural
SOL phytochemicals with excellent optical properties is encouraging for future
photovoltaic applications.
... Surbhi Jain et al. employed ARC of TiO 2 (titanium dioxide) film along with plasmonic silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) for silicon-based solar cells. It was observed that the presence of ARC reduced the reflection losses due to the presence of TiO 2 and the PCE improved to 16.04% [33]. Yunfei Xu et al. developed a doublelayer antireflection (DLAR ) coatings consists of mesoporous SiO 2 through the sol-gel method [34]. ...
... The SiO 2 coated solar cell showed the lower reflectance of 19% than uncoated solar cell due to the better passivation offered by the SiO 2 layer. The reduced reflectance of 14% of S3 sample is attributed to the anti-reflective property possessed by the deposited TiO 2 thin film that is responsible for the suppression of surface recombination resulting in less optical losses and enhanced transmission of light towards the Si layer [33]. The further reduction of reflectance of the ZrO 2 coated S4 sample is due to higher surface roughness of the ZrO 2 and the minimal scattering of incident photons at the coating surface.is ...
... The observed increase of PCE from 12.13% (S1) to 19.8% (S5) is due to the reduction in reflective losses at the front surface and the enhanced capturing of incident photon into the solar cell. This is attributed by combined properties of the SiO 2 /TiO 2 / ZrO 2 blend such as better passivation SiO 2 , transmission possessed by the TiO 2 , Surface roughness offered by TiO 2 and ZrO 2 [33].The high surface roughness of the corresponding sample leads to multiple internal reflections of the incident light rays, which thus improves the light trapping capacity of solar cells [5]. I-V properties of SiO 2 , TiO 2 , ZrO 2, and SiO 2 /TiO 2 /ZrO 2 blend-coated solar cells samples and uncoated solar cell samples under open source condition is plotted in Fig. 10. ...
Obtaining maximum efficiency is one of the key elements of renewable energy sources in the present era. In this context, the research focuses on enhancing the power conversion efficiency of silicon solar cells through anti-reflective coating. Better light transmittance in silicon solar cells with anti-reflective thin film coatings results in higher power conversion efficiency. The RF sputtering technique was employed to deposit the thin film of ARCs on polycrystalline Si solar cells. Blends of metal oxides such as SiO2, TiO2, and ZrO2 have been employed in different combinations to achieve a higher PCE. Using the RF sputtering technique, the coating was uniform. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were both used to examine the structural and morphological characteristics of ARC-coated and uncoated silicon solar cells, respectively. By employing the four-point probe approach, the electrical resistivity was measured in the dark and at room temperature. Solar cell samples were examined for their optical properties through UV–visible spectroscopy. By comparing the efficiency of the ARC-coated and uncoated solar cell samples, it is evident that solar cells coated with the SiO2/TiO2/ZrO2 mechanical blend show an improved PCE of 19.8% under open atmospheric conditions and 21.93% under controlled atmospheric conditions compared to the uncoated, SiO2, TiO2, and ZrO2-coated cells.
... The CuNPs contributed to the enhanced FF by decreasing the reflectivity of the surface and hence increased the light-harvesting efficiency. It is worth mentioning that Jain et al. obtained a much more increment using AgNPs with TiO 2 layer as anti-reflection coating (Jain et al. 2020). Although our CuNPs deposited on thick crystalline silicon wafers did not give a comparable enhancement to Jain et al. we expect higher conversion efficiency if we use CuNPs with an anti-reflection coating layer on thin-film solar cells. ...
In this work, a direct current (DC) sputtering system has been utilized to incorporate plasmonics copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) on bare (reference) silicon solar cells. Two different sputtering times 1 and 8 min was employed to form nano-islands of different height and distribution of the nanoparticles. For sputtering time 1 min., the particle size of CuNPs varied from 3 to 30 nm with the highest peak in the histogram being 27 nm, while for 8 min the CuNPs particle size varied from 5 to 50 nm with the highest peak value about 30 nm. The reflectivity was about 12, 28, and 29 for 8 min, 1 min, and 0 min (reference solar cell), respectively. The reflectivity reduction is strongly related to the nano-island size and the percentages of the hot spot regions. The electrical properties of bare Si solar cells and for the same structure with incorporated CuNPs have been investigated. In conclusion, CuNPs can be utilized as an alternative abundant and inexpensive plasmonic material to improve the efficiency of the solar cell.
... Since in solar cells, the goal is to increase output efficiency without increasing the volume of used materials, new methods are needed to trap more light (Ren et al. 2019a(Ren et al. , 2019bHuang et al. 2016). There are many methods for achieving high efficiency in thin-film solar cells, such as the coupling of light at the front (Jain et al. 2020;Wang et al. 2017), reflection at the back (Banerjee et al. 2019;Hungerford and Fauchet 2017), and using the photonic crystals (Gupta 2019;Choi et al. 2019;Kim et al. 2019;Wan et al. 2019;Chen 2011). One of the new methods is to use the scattering effect from metallic nanoparticles (NPs) that are excited by their surface plasmon resonance (Faraone et al. 2018;Ghahremanirad et al. 2018;Ranabhat et al. 2019;Hu et al. 2017). ...
This paper investigates the enhancement performance of InP nanowire (NW) array solar cells using plasmonic nanostructures. Since plasmonic nanostructures allow the control of fundamental optical processes such as absorption, emission, and reflection at the nanoscale, we employ two different metal–insulator-metal (Au-SiO2-Au) plasmonic nanostructures as a back reflector in square and hexagonal lattices of NW array solar cells. We obtain different properties of the proposed structures including optical absorption and short circuit current density (Jsc) with the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The performance of these solar cells has been compared with each other. It has been shown that using the stripe arrays in metal–insulator-metal (MIM) structure in square lattice leads to the 7.7% enhancement in short circuit current density compared to the bare cell.
... Because of the scattering of the metallic nanoparticles deposited at the top surface, the optical path length of the light can be enhanced inside the absorption layer. Jain et al. [162] investigated TiO 2 film of 30 nm thickness as an antireflection coating (ARC) along with plasmonic Ag NPs (90 nm). Plasmonic Ag NPs were applied at the front surface (Figure 10a-c). ...
... Thus, the ARC/plasmonic combination enhanced the PCE by~40%. [162]. (Reprinted with permission from [162], 2020, Springer Nature and Copyright Clearance Center). ...
... [162]. (Reprinted with permission from [162], 2020, Springer Nature and Copyright Clearance Center). ...
Enhancement of the electromagnetic properties of metallic nanostructures constitute an extensive research field related to plasmonics. The latter term is derived from plasmons, which are quanta corresponding to longitudinal waves that are propagating in matter by the collective motion of electrons. Plasmonics are increasingly finding wide application in sensing, microscopy, optical communications, biophotonics, and light trapping enhancement for solar energy conversion. Although the plasmonics field has relatively a short history of development, it has led to substantial advancement in enhancing the absorption of the solar spectrum and charge carrier separation efficiency. Recently, huge developments have been made in understanding the basic parameters and mechanisms governing the application of plasmonics, including the effects of nanoparticles’ size, arrangement, and geometry and how all these factors impact the dielectric field in the surrounding medium of the plasmons. This review article emphasizes recent developments, fundamentals, and fabrication techniques for plasmonic nanostructures while investigating their thermal effects and detailing light-trapping enhancement mechanisms. The mismatch effect of the front and back light grating for optimum light trapping is also discussed. Different arrangements of plasmonic nanostructures in photovoltaics for efficiency enhancement, plasmonics’ limitations, and modeling performance are also deeply explored.
... It is fortunate that anti-reflective coatings widely found in some animals in nature, e.g., moth, butterfly and hawkmoths [8][9][10], reducing reflection losses at the interfaces. Various materials such as SiO 2 [11,12], TiO 2 [13,14], ZnO [15,16] and SiO 2 -TiO 2 [17] with different surface patterns have been developed to be used as anti-reflective coatings for silicon to improve solar cells performance. Particularly, due to unique properties including high-level of hardness (up to 80 GPa), high resistivity (up to 10 16 Ω cm), wide band gap (1.0-4.0 eV) and adjustable refractive index (1.6-2.2), ...
In this work, diamond-like carbon (DLC) films used as anti-reflective coatings for monocrystalline silicon were deposited by magnetron sputtering for potential application in solar cells. The microstructural and optical properties of the films were investigated as a function of substrate temperature over a wide range during deposition. It showed that, when the substrate temperature increased from RT to 800 °C, the hybridized structures of the DLC films accordingly changed associated with a significant variation of refractive index between2.22 and 1.64 at a wavelength of 550 nm. Three types of coating systems, namely single-, three- and five-layer films on monocrystalline silicon substrates, were designed based on the anti-reflection principle and fabricated in terms of the relationships of refractive index and deposition rate with substrate temperature. In particular, a well-designed three-layer film, of which the refractive index gradually changed along the thickness, that is 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0, respectively, was successfully deposited at one step on monocrystalline silicon substrates by adjusting substrate temperature and deposition time, and featured a broadband anti-reflective characteristic with low average reflectivity of 8.7% at a wide solar spectrum of 400–1100 nm. This work demonstrates that the DLC film has a promising application potential as broadband anti-reflective coatings in silicon-based solar cells.
... Especially, TFSCs can save Si material and thus reduce the cost greatly, which has great value for applications and makes the research very meaningful. Thus, TFSCs have been a hot research topic for experts and scholars during the past decades [1][2][3][4]. At present, many kinds of TFSCs have been extensively examined and reported, for example, Si-based TFSCs [5,6], CdTe TFSCs [7], and GaAs TFSCs [8]. ...
Crystalline silicon thin-film solar cells with period-mismatched sine dual-interface gratings are proposed. Several structural parameters of the front and rear gratings, such as heights, periods, and duty ratios, are optimized using the finite-difference time-domain method. The mechanisms of absorption enhancement are also illustrated by analyzing the optical and electrical performance in thin-film solar cells with different grating arrangements. Numerical results indicate that the period-mismatched sine dual-interface grating structure shows obvious improvement in absorption efficiency and is more suitable for grating structures with small period. The short-circuit current density of the period-mismatched dual-interface sine grating structure is improved to ${18.89}\;{{{\rm mA}/{\rm cm}}^2}$ 18.89 m A / c m 2 , an increase of 41.39% as compared with the planar structure. The research findings can be utilized to guide the design of grating structures for thin-film solar cells.
... It was concluded from the results that about 22% efficiency improvement was achieved with antireflection coating. In other study, Jain, et al. used Titanium dioxide (TiO2) on thin crystalline silicon solar cells as an anti-reflective coating with the incorporation of plasmonic silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) along a solar cell front surface [5]. It was observed that a significant enhancement in power conversion efficiency of solar cell from 9.53% (without anti-reflective coating) to 16.04% (cell with anti-reflective coating of TiO2 and Ag NPs). ...
... Other solar sell parameters are set up similar to the parameters that used in case1. The simulation results are illustrated in table(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). ...
Recently, global companies are competing to improve the efficiency of solar cells and supporting the researches that contribute in the development of solar cell technologies. One of the important issues that affect the efficiency of solar cell conversion system is an optical loss which caused due to the fact that an incident light is reflected back from the surface of the solar cell. Coating the solar cell using antireflection materials can increase the light absorbed by the cell surface and thus solving the issue. The main objective of this paper is to design a silicon solar cell model using PC1D simulation software. A silicon solar cell model with 10 x 10 cm 2 area and thickness of 300 and 2 µm for P and N layer respectively was simulated in PC1D with consideration two cases: one silicon solar cell model without antireflection coating (ARC) materials, and others with five ARC materials. The impact of a single layer Antireflection coating based on five polymeric materials on silicon solar cell efficiency has been analyzed. The proposed polymer materials are Poly dimethyl siloxane (PDMS), Polystyrene (PS), Poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA), Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and Polycarbonate (PC). The initial simulation results show that the solar cell efficiency is about 15.39%. A great enhancement in solar cell efficiency was achieved with utilizing ARC materials. It was found that the optimum efficiency can be obtained at 600 nm wavelength for all selected ARC materials. Among five ARC polymer materials, Polycarbonate (PC) realized a good improvement which reached about 5% on the solar cell efficiency. The electrical characteristics, and efficiency of solar cells have been analyzed at each wavelength in this paper.
This paper presents the sensitivity study of ST-X quartz-based SAW sensor under the influence of temperature. SAW sensor based on ST-quartz structure with different non-conductive overlayers, including metal oxides (TiO2, ZnO) and polymers are used in the present work. Thermal study of SAW sensor with temperature compensated over-layer has been studied. In order to the study thermal behavior of SAW sensors, a shift in magnitude, centre frequency, phase, group delay, temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) has been studied for temperature ranges 5 to 150 oC. The experimental results showed that uncoated/SAW sensors are more sensitive to temperature change but SAW sensor with overlayer shows less susceptible behavior to temperature change. TCF values for polymer/SAW, ZnO/SAW, and TiO2/SAW are -27.125 ppm/oC, -21.67 ppm/oC, -14.4 ppm/oC respectively. The main outcome of this study is that an overlayer as temperature compensated layer will reduce the sensor's sensitivity but make sensor less susceptible to temperature changes and also improves sensor’s stability. This study will be useful for physical as well as chemical sensing applications.
