Transparency and water-resistance enhancement of AR coating for the cover glass in the solar cell module

This paper demonstrates the antireflection coating of SiO₂ nanospheres applied to cover glass by using the optimal spin-coating method. Because of the hydrolysis and condensation reactions between the SiO₂ nanosphere antireflection (AR) coating and n-octadecyltriethoxysilane solution (C₁₈-TEOS), the contact angle of the AR coating with hydrophobic treatment can be enhanced to 110° and the water-resistant remains unchanged which preserved similar transmittance for six weeks. Furthermore, the AR coating with hydrophobic treatment exhibits approximately 3% and 7% improvement in the transmittance of unpolarized light at normal and oblique incidence, respectively. And the transmittances of p- and s- polarization states are shown opposite tendency as incident angle increase. The hydrophobic and omnidirectional AR coating with nanoscale SiO₂ particles can be fabricated using the proposed simple and economical method.