Efficiency enhancement in thin-film c-Si HIT solar cells using luminescent 2.85 nm silicon nanoparticles

Author

Chowdhury, Farsad I. ; Alnuaimi, Aaesha ; Islam, Kaidul ; Nayfeh, Ammar

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci. (EECS), Inst. Center for Future Energy Syst. (iFES), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

fYear

2014

fDate

8-13 June 2014

Firstpage

2209

Lastpage

2213

Abstract

A simple and low-cost method for enhancing the efficiency of c-Si HIT solar cells is reported. By coating 2.85 nm silicon nanoparticles (Si NPs) on the top of the solar cells, efficiency improvement is observed with respect to the uncoated reference cells. The efficiency enhancement can be attributed to the Si NPs photoluminescence (Ultra Violet absorption followed by red re-emission). Spin coating technique was used to integrate Si NPs on the cells. Compared to uncoated solar cells, Si NPs coated solar cells show an average improvement of 2.33% and 5.16% in short circuit current density (J_sc) and efficiency respectively.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; light absorption; nanoparticles; photoluminescence; short-circuit currents; silicon; solar cells; spin coating; Si; luminescent silicon nanoparticles; photoluminescence; short circuit current density; spin coating technique; thin-film crystalline silicon HIT solar cells; ultraviolet absorption; uncoated reference cells; Coatings; Nanoparticles; Photovoltaic cells; Physics; Plasmons; Silicon; silicon nanoparticles; solar cells; spin coating;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 2014 IEEE 40th

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2014.6925364

Filename

6925364