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Article history:
Received 2 February 2010
Accepted 6 August 2010
Keywords:
Anti-reection coating
Porous silicon
Solar cells
High efciency
a b s t r a c t
Anti-reection coatings of solar cells have been fabricated using different techniques. The techniques
used include SiO2 thermal oxidation, ZnO/TiO2 sputtering deposition and porous silicon prepared by
electrochemical etching. Surface morphology and structural properties of solar cells were investigated
by using scanning electron microscopy and atomic forces microscopy. Optical reectance was obtained
by using optical reectometer. IV characterizations were studied under 80 mW/cm2 illumination conditions. Porous silicon was found to be an excellent anti-reection coating against incident light when it is
compared with another anti-reection coating and exhibited good light-trapping of a wide wavelength
spectrum which produced high efciency solar cells.
2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The reduction of reectivity is a very important parameter in
obtaining high efciency solar cells. To achieve this goal, the top
surface of the solar cells is usually covered with different antireection coating methods. These methods can be divided into three
techniques: thermal oxidation, sputtering deposition and electrochemical etching.
The reduction of optical reection at layers interface is a fundamental challenge in most important applications of optics. The
optical reection at a specic wavelength can be reduced using
a single layer coating with quarter-wavelength optical thickness
1463
8 nm. This means that the pore diameter and nanostructure size are
dependent on anodization conditions such as HF:ethanol concentration, etching time, temperature, and current density [11]. More
homogeneous and uniform distributions of pores have been shown
clearly in our sample when it is compared with other samples,
prepared in different electrolyte composition [12].
Fig. 6 shows the statistical distribution of SiO2 roughness height.
This histogram distribution is a key parameter to give the information about surface uniformity and the coating formation.
The single layer antireection (SLAR) coating of SiO2 reveal more
smooth surface (3.17 nm roughness) compared with double layer
antireection (DLAR) coatings of ZnO/TiO2 (7.8 nm roughness) and
PS surface coating (1025 nm roughness) as shown in Figs. 7 and 8
respectively. The high roughness PS layer implies the possibility to
enhance the solar cell photoconversion that forms light trapping
centers which lead to high intensity of luminescent as shown in
Fig. 9.
Fig. 10 shows the various reectance spectra of SiO2 , ZnO/TiO2
and PS coating. It was found the PS surface texturing clearly reduce
light reection and increased the light-trapping upon wide wavelength range compared with the surfaces reections affected by
SLAR coating and DLAR coatings due to the reconstructed porous
silicon which lead to reduce the reection.
The open-circuit voltage Voc , short-circuit current Isc , maximum
voltage Vm , and the maximum current Im , are the prominent parameters to calculate the solar cell efciency. The efciency of the cell
at the maximum power point can be calculated as follows:
=
Pm
Im Vm
=
Pin
Pin
(1)
1464
Table 1
Calculations of ll factor (FF) and efciency to SiO2 coating, ZnO/TiO2 coating and PS coating.
Samples
Vm (V)
Im (mA)
Voc (V)
Isc (mA)
FF
Efciency,
PS coating
ZnO/TiO2 coating
SiO2 coating
0.36
0.292
0.26
12.39
6.03
5.09
0.44
0.37
0.34
12.4
6.04
5.1
0.82
0.79
0.77
11.23%
4.41%
3.34%
Im Vm
Isc Voc
(2)
4. Conclusion
1465
14
12
Current (mA)
10
8
6
4
2
0
SiO 2 coating
ZnO/TiO 2 coating
PS coating
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
Voltage (V)
0.5
ZnO/TiO 2 coating
Fig. 11. Currentvoltage (IV) characteristics of (a) SiO2 coating, (b) ZnO/TiO2 coating and (c) PS coating.
SiO 2 coating
PS coating
Reflection
0.4
References
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
300
400
500
600
700
800
Wavelength (nm)
900
1000
1100
Fig. 10. The reectance spectra of SiO2 coating, ZnO/TiO2 coating and PS coating.
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