Solar cell efficiency enhancement via light trapping in printable resonant dielectric nanosphere arrays
Abstract
Resonant dielectric structures are a promising platform for addressing the key challenge of light trapping in thin-film solar cells. We experimentally and theoretically demonstrate efficiency enhancements in solar cells from dielectric nanosphere arrays. Two distinct amorphous silicon photovoltaic architectures were improved using this versatile light-trapping platform. In one structure, the colloidal monolayer couples light into the absorber in the near-field acting as a photonic crystal light-trapping element. In the other, it acts in the far-field as a graded index antireflection coating to further improve a cell which already included a state-of-the-art random light-trapping texture to achieve a conversion efficiency over 11%. For the near-field flat cell architecture, we directly fabricated the colloidal monolayer on the device through Langmuir–Blodgett deposition in a scalable process that does not degrade the active material. In addition, we present a novel transfer printing method, which utilizes chemical crosslinking of an optically thin adhesion layer to tether sphere arrays to the device surface. The minimally invasive processing conditions of this transfer method enable the application to a wide range of solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. False-color SEM image of an amorphous silicon solar cell with resonant spheres on top.
Additional Information
© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. Received 5 October 2012; revised 24 October 2012; accepted 24 October 2012; Published online 22 November 2012. The authors wish to thank A. J. Leenheer. A. Mihi. P. V. Braun, M. Charrière. and K Söderström for useful technical input. The work at Caltech was supported by the "Light-Material Interactions in Energy Conversion" Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001293. The work at EPFL was supported by the Swiss Federal Energy Office. RAW thanks the Resnick Sustainability Institute for a graduate fellowship.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - pssa_201228690_sm_movie.mov
Supplemental Material - pssa_201228690_sm_suppdata.pdf
Files
Name | Size | Download all |
---|---|---|
md5:76f8f94e2bbba30ac10aa9da6752e627
|
643.0 kB | Preview Download |
md5:91f3951dceeb0546a79e36e2bebcd540
|
17.2 MB | Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 38108
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130424-160158368
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0001293
- Swiss Federal Energy Office
- Resnick Sustainability Institute
- Created
-
2013-04-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Resnick Sustainability Institute