Enhanced light harvesting of Si solar cells via luminescent down‐shifting using YVO₄:Bi³⁺, Eu³⁺ nanophosphors

Abstract

The colloids of YVO4 nanoparticles on microtextured Si surface are demonstrated to have promising potential for efficient solar spectrum utilization in crystalline Si solar cells. The solar cells showed an enhancement of 4% in short‐circuit current density and approximately 0.7% in power conversion efficiency when coated with YVO4 nanoparticles. The properties of cells integrated with YVO4 nanoparticles were characterized to identify the role of YVO4 in improved light harvesting. The current experiments conclude that the colloids of YVO4 nanoparticles not only act as luminescent down‐shifting centers in the ultraviolet region but also serve as an antireflection coating for enhancing the light absorption in the measured spectral regime. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reduced ultraviolet light induced degradation and enhanced light harvesting using YVO4:Eu3+ down-shifting nano-phosphor layer in organometal halide perovskite solar cells

“…The use of down-shifting phosphor material has been shown to result in the improvement of shortwavelength spectral response because a part of the UV spectrum is converted to visible region, which is then absorbed by the active material. 24 The absorbance spectra of perovskite (CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 ) show dip in absorbance values above 500 nm (Fig. 3(b), inset, red dotted line).…”

Nanophosphor Coatings: Technology and Applications, Opportunities and Challenges

“…The screen printing technique, in which a concentrated phosphor ink containing a liquid organic vehicle is applied to a substrate through a mesh screen and then calcinated to remove organic additives, could also be implemented for nanophopshor plasma display panels (Song et al, 2012a;Song et al, 2012b), field emission screens , and X-Ray imaging systems . Sol-gel coatings and pastes can be applied by dip-coating (Pang et al, 2003;Wu et al, 2007) or spin-coating (Bedekar et al, 2010;Buissette et al, 2006;Huang et al, 2012a;Khan et al, 2008;Klausch et al, 2012;Psuja et al, 2009;Revaux et al, 2011b;Song et al, 2011). Wet spraying, known for many decades (Sadowsky, 1949), could be adopted for the deposition of nanophosphors as well (Fleury et al, 2012;Revaux et al, 2011a).…”

“…Such coatings are placed in front of the cell and ideally they should not interfere with light which does not need to be converted. Obviously, transparency of the converter layer is strongly desired so that nanophosphor coatings should be preferred over conventional phosphors (Huang et al, 2012a;Khan et al, 2008;Peng et al, 2011;Takeshita et al, 2009). Upconverting SCs perform a complimentary function of absorbing low-energy photons, for which the solar cell itself is transparent, and convert to photons of shorter wavelength so that they could also be absorbed by the solar cell.…”

Photovoltaic Performance Characterization of Textured Silicon Solar Cells Using Luminescent Down-Shifting Eu-Doped Phosphor Particles of Various Dimensions

“…Many researchers have sought to enhance the overall conversion efficiency by applying a down-conversion (DC) layer or a down-shifting (DS) layer over the top surface of the C-Si in order to improve its spectral response in the UV-blue region [16,17,18]. Other researchers have developed phosphor materials for luminescent downshifting (LDS) with the aim of converting high-energy incident photons into lower energy photons in photovoltaic devices [19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. …”