Enhancing photovoltaic cell efficiency: A comprehensive study on BN-Si3N4 blend antireflective coatings and their impact on power conversion

Abstract

Antireflective surface coatings were one of the most important factors that contributed to the improvement of the functionality of photovoltaic cells. The coatings were performed by different methods such as RF sputtering, spin coating, dip coating, electro spraying etc. The coating materials such as BN, Si3N4 and BN-Si3N4 blends were applied to solar cells using the RF sputtering technique in this study. Several distinct characterization methods were adopted to assess the productivity of Si3N4 coated cells. The BN-Si3N4 blend coated cell has a low light reflection of 8 % and exhibits uniform layer deposition, which shows a significant improvement over conventional solar cell. The BN-Si3N4 solar cell was able to obtain the highest possible power conversion efficiency of 19.70 % when exposed to direct sunlight and 21.28 % when exposed to neodymium light. It possess the narrow scope of visible spectrum and acts as green/yellow filter in visible spectrum. This light is capable of delivering light similar to sunlight with consistent radiation. This was accomplished by increasing the transmission of photons that reached the depletion region. The four-probe experiment was employed to measure the electrical resistivity of BN-Si3N4 solar cell, which was found to be 0.00298 Ω-cm. This value was lower than the electrical resistivity of other solar cell samples. Based on the results, BN-Si3N4combination outperformed both coated and bare cells. It was found that BN-Si3N4blendwas a remarkable antireflective coating to maximize the performance.