Full-Spectrum Solar Energy Utilization and Enhanced Solar Energy Harvesting via Photon Anti-Reflection and Scattering Performance Using Nanophotonic Structure

Abstract

Conventional Si photovoltaic cells cannot convert full solar energy spectrum (400~2 500 nm) into electricity owing to the mismatch between Si band gap and broad range of solar photon energies. Transparent silicon PV cell allows sunlight in the wavelength of 1 100~2 500 nm to transmit through itself and irradiate on the thermal absorber below. The traditional photon management method based on texturing silicon layer with nanostructures can enhance 400~1 100 nm absorptivity and 1 1002 500 nm transmittance of transparent silicon PV cell. However, an increase in charge carrier capture and a decrease in electricity generation efficiency are often observed with this. In this study, a novel spectral splitting method based on frontlocated wavelength-sized TiO 2 biomimetic moth-eye nanophotonic structure is put forward, which can inhibit the increase of charge carrier capture and recombination. The biomimetic moth-eye nanophotonic structure was optimized by using finitedifference time-domain (FDTD) method to achieve excellent photon anti-reflection and scattering properties. The calculation results indicated that the absorption factor and transmission factor of transparent silicon PV cell could be increased from 46% to 58% and from 11% to 14%; the relative power conversion efficiency enhancement rate and relative incident radiation power enhancement rate was 32% and 27% when the TiO 2 biomimetic moth-eye was adopted.

A high-Temperature Near-Perfect Solar Selective Absorber Combining Tungsten Nanohole and Nanoshuriken Arrays

“…The total solar absorptance of the absorber for the AM1.5 solar spectrum (α tot ) can be expressed as Eq. (8) [31,55] , and the total emittance (ε tot ) of the absorber under the temperature of T can be expressed as Eq. ( 9).…”

Design of Biomimetic Leaf-type Hierarchical Nanostructure for Enhancing the Solar Energy Harvesting of Ultra-thin Perovskite Solar Cells

“…After calculating the electromagnetic field distribution, the spectral absorptivity could be computed by: [41,60] abs ( )…”

“…[59] However, texturing would unavoidably enhance the surface area and defect density in the perovskite material, which in turn enhanced carrier recombination and eventually deteriorated the solar cell's efficiency. [60,61] Therefore, it was important to develop a useful photon management strategy which could protect the integrity of the perovskite absorber layer and did not increase the recombination and capture of charge carriers. [62] Recently, inspired by nature, such as butterflies, [63] honeycomb [64] and motheye, [65] biomimetic nanophotonic structures have been developed to control the incident light for camouflage, antireflection and scattering.…”

An ultrathin and compact electron transport layer made from novel water-dispersed Fe3O4 nanoparticles to accomplish UV-stable perovskite solar cells

“…Solar cell is a widely studied clean energy source [1][2][3][4][5][6] . Perovskite solar cell is one of the most important solar cells for sustainable clean energy in recent years, [7][8][9][10] which normally consists of five parts: conductive glass such as F-doped tin oxide (FTO) and In-doped tin oxide (ITO), electron transport layer (ETL), light absorbs layer that is also called perovskite layer, hole transport layer like Spiro-OMeTAD and black electrode like gold and silver.…”