Graphene‐Tapered ZnO Nanorods Array as a Flexible Antireflection Layer

Taeseup Song

doi:10.1155/2015/925863

Abstract

Flexible solar cells have drawn a great deal of attention due to their various advantages including deformable and wearable characteristics. In the solar cells, the antireflection layer plays an important role in the improvement in the conversion efficiency by increasing the light transmission and suppressing the Fresnel refraction. For the successful implantation of the antireflection layer into the flexible solar cells, the flexible mechanical property of the antireflection layer is also necessary. However, the study on flexible antireflection layer for the flexible solar cells or optoelectronics is still lacking. In this study, we report the graphene‐tapered ZnO nanorods array as a flexible antireflection layer for the application in flexible solar cells. Flexible two‐dimensional graphene sheet and the tapered morphology of ZnO nanorods enable conformal coverage on the flexible substrate with curved surface and significant improvements in antireflection properties, respectively.

Highlights

Flexible solar cells have drawn a great deal of attention in recent years due to their various advantages including lightweight, deformable, and wearable characteristics [1, 2]
Antireflection layer is considered as an indispensable component in solar cells as it plays an important role in the improvement in the conversion efficiency of solar cells by increasing the light transmission and suppressing the Fresnel refraction of a material over a broad range of wavelengths [9,10,11]
We report graphene-tapered ZnO nanorods array as a flexible antireflection layer for the flexible solar cells application

Summary

Introduction

Flexible solar cells have drawn a great deal of attention in recent years due to their various advantages including lightweight, deformable, and wearable characteristics [1, 2] Significant advances in both the performance and the processability have been achieved via engineering in active materials [3,4,5] and cell structures [6,7,8]. We achieve robust and excellent antireflection properties on the bumpy surface by combining the advantages of the flexibility from the graphene sheet and significantly improved antireflection properties from tapered ZnO nanorods array. The polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, Sylgard 184, Dow Corning), with base to cross-linking agent with a mass ratio of 10 : 1, was employed as a flexible substrate to evaluate the optical properties of graphene-ZnO nanorods array as an antireflection layer on the flexible substrate. Optical properties were evaluated using Varian Carry 5000 model UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometer

Materials and Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusion