A Foam-Core Meniscus Coating Process for Retrofit Anti-Reflective Coatings

Abstract

Foam-core meniscus coating is being used to retrofit 100 nm-scale sol–gel anti-reflective coatings (ARCs) onto in-field solar panels through the deposition, evaporation, and curing of wet films. Advantages of this technique include the means to control fluid flow relative to substrate motion and the ability to conform to large, warped substrates. While simple in practice, no models exist for predicting critical outcomes such as film thickness. In this paper, preliminary experiments are used to identify important process parameters, and an analytical model is developed and validated for predicting the thickness of silica sol–gel films deposited on solar glass.

Silicon dioxide thin films prepared by spin coating for the application of solar cells

“…Energy costs can be reduced by reducing costs in production methods. As an effective thin film coating approach, the ARLs can be easily prepared by sol-gel based coating processes such as dipping, spinning, meniscus, and spray pyrolysis to obtain quality optical thin films [5][6][7][8]. Compared to physical and chemical steam methods, the sol-gel method has many advantages such as being cheaper, easily adaptable to industry scale and mass production, working under normal atmospheric conditions, high purity, ultra-homogeneity, and working at the desired molarity and temperature [9][10][11].…”