Improved optical absorption in visible wavelength range for silicon solar cells via texturing with nanopyramid arrays

Abstract

Surface-texture with silicon (Si) nanopyramid arrays has been considered as a promising choice for extremely high performance solar cells due to their excellent anti-reflective effects and inherent low parasitic surface areas. However, the current techniques of fabricating Si nanopyramid arrays are always complicated and cost-ineffective. Here, a high throughput nanosphere patterning method is developed to form periodic upright nanopyramid (UNP) arrays in wafer-scale. A direct comparison with the state-of-the-art texture of random pyramids is demonstrated in optical and electronic properties. In combination with the antireflection effect of a SiN_x coating layer, the periodic UNP arrays help to provide a remarkable improvement in short-wavelength response over the random pyramids, attributing to a short-current density gain of 1.35 mA/cm². The advanced texture of periodic UNP arrays provided in this work shows a huge potential to be integrated into the mass production of high-efficiency Si solar cells.

Heterojunction Hybrid Solar Cells by Formation of Conformal Contacts between PEDOT:PSS and Periodic Silicon Nanopyramid Arrays

“…Fabrication of Nanostructured Si : The UNP‐textured silicon was etched from single‐crystal, n‐type Si (100) silicon wafer (1–3 Ω cm, 270 ± 20 µm thickness). The UNP arrays were fabricated by scalable colloidal lithography and anisotropic wet etch technique, which was reported in the previous work . Closely packed monolayer of 1.4 µm polystyrene (PS) nanosphere was prepared by micropropulsive injection technique, then the assembled monolayer of PS sphere was subjected to reactive‐ion etching process in the atmosphere mixed of O 2 and Ar to reduce the diameter of the PS spheres.…”

Sidewall Profile Dependent Nanostructured Ultrathin Solar Cells With Enhanced Light Trapping Capabilities

“…Most recently, due to the requirement of low cost and dimension controllable properties of the nanostructure, self-assembled nano-preparation method has been proposed, and the commercial value outstands in the widespread use of photovoltaic devices [13]- [16] and light-emitting diodes [17], [18]. Moreover, some achieves have shown that nanostructure with gradually changed sidewall profiles can effectively improve the optical performance of the solar cells [19]- [22]. Guan Zisheng et al made an inverted pyramid structured c-Si solar cell by controlling the metal assisted chemical etching process, which improved the Jsc by 0.22 mA/cm 2 when comparing with the best positive pyramid structured c-Si solar cell [20].…”

“…Fan Zhiyong et al used the pre-imprinting anodization AAO (PIA-AAO) process to prepare amorphous silicon solar cells on nano-cone plastic substrates, the light trapping efficiency reached as high as two folds of the similar planar devices [21]. Gao Pingqi et al proposed a high-throughput nanosphere patterning method to form a periodic upright nanopyramid arrays on the silicon surface, resulting a 1.35 mA/cm 2 Jsc improvement by comparing with the state-of-the-art random pyramids textured one [22]. However, most of these studies are based on single morphology parameter of the structures.…”

Facile Fabrication of Micro/Nano Hierarchical SERS Sensor via Anisotropic Etching and Electrochemical Treatment for Malachite Green Detection

“…Due to its low process threshold and cost-effective performance, this is the most mature production process in the photovoltaic industry for decades. An anisotropic wet chemical etch is typically utilized to form a micro-sized pyramidal structure as a light-harvesting structure using different etch rates of silicon crystals at <100> and <111> surfaces [14]. It has been shown that a randomly sized pyramid array surface can have better light-harvesting efficiency and therefore a better absorption coefficient than planar and single sized pyramid array surfaces [15].…”