Abstract
A non-vacuum processing method for preparing polymer-based ZrO2/TiO2 multilayer structure antireflection coating (ARC) films for crystalline silicon solar cells by spin coating is introduced. Initially, ZrO2, TiO2 and surface deactivated-TiO2 (SD-TiO2) based films were examined separately and the effect of photocatalytic properties of TiO2 film on the reflectivity on silicon surface was investigated. Degradation of the reflectance performance with increasing reflectivity of up to 2% in the ultraviolet region was confirmed. No significant change of the reflectance was observed when utilizing SD-TiO2 and ZrO2 films. Average reflectance (between 300 nm–1100 nm) of the silicon surface coated with optimized polymer-based ZrO2 single or ZrO2/SD-TiO2 multilayer composite films was decreased down to 6.5% and 5.5%, respectively. Improvement of photocurrent density (Jsc) and conversion efficiency (η) of fabricated silicon solar cells owing to the ZrO2/SD-TiO2 multilayer ARC could be confirmed. The photovoltaic properties of Jsc, the open-circuit photo voltage (VOC), the fill factor (FF), and the η were 31.42 mA cm−2, 575 mV, 71.5% and 12.91%. Efficiency of the solar cells was improved by the ZrO2-polymer/SD-TiO2 polymer ARC composite layer by a factor of 0.8% with an increase of Jsc (2.07 mA cm−2) compared to those of fabricated without the ARC.
Highlights
Improving the absorption properties and reducing the optical losses in solar cells are crucial to achieve higher efficiencies
After the evaluation of the antireflection coating (ARC) films, CZ-Si p-type solar cells were fabricated by applying ZrO2 -polymer (ZrO2 -P), surface deactivated-TiO2 (SD-TiO2) -P composite films and ZrO2 -P/SD-TiO2 -P composite multilayer structure films as ARC layer and compared with those of the cells fabricated without any ARC film
ZrO2‐polymer composite/surface‐deactivated TiO2‐polymer composite films were prepared by a low‐cost spin coating deposition method as an alternative ARC film for c‐Si solar cells
Summary
Improving the absorption properties and reducing the optical losses in solar cells are crucial to achieve higher efficiencies. Several nanoscale light absorption, trapping and antireflection scheme approaches including nanoscale surface texturing and nanoparticle assisted structures, and plasmonic structures has been investigated due to their good electro-optical properties [1,2,3] These approaches are based on light scattering and trapping at nanoscale approaches and mainly focus on thin film solar cells where conventional micrometer scale surface texturing is not suitable and on low grade silicon solar cells where the short carrier collection length needs to be considered. A considerable amount of literature has been published on sol-gel processes for silicon solar cells, including TiO2 , TiO2 -SiO2 [14,15] and some Al2 O3 -based Ti doped mixed sol-gel sources have been introduced as well [17,18] In addition to these metal oxides, ZrO2 thin films can be another candidate as an antireflection layer with the properties of high refractive index and good thermal stability [19]. After the experimental evaluations in this work, silicon solar cells were fabricated with and without using ZrO2 -P composite, ZrO2 -P/SD-TiO2 -P multilayer composite films
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
