Periodic Si Nanopillar Arrays Fabricated by Colloidal Lithography and Catalytic Etching for Broadband and Omnidirectional Elimination of Fresnel Reflection

Wang, Hsin Ping; Lai, K. Robert; Lin, Yi; Lin, Chieh-An; He, Jr Hau

doi:10.1021/la1012507

Cited by 107 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…As opposed to the top-down method, bottom-up fabrication of nanostructures is an enticing approach to fabricate nanostructures without using costly processes such as lithography and dry-etching. [ 5,17,22,32,51,63,64,[74][75][76][77] As an example, Fan et al reported ordered arrays of Germanium (Ge) dual-diameter Nanopillars (DNPLs) with different diameters at the tip and base fabricated inside self-organized anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates. Such DNPLs presented an impressive absorption of 99% of the incident light over a wavelength ranging from 300 to 900 nm with a thickness of only 2 µm.…”

Section: Brief Review Of Light Harvesting With Nanostructuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress and Design Concerns of Nanostructured Solar Energy Harvesting Devices

Leung

Zhang

Tavakoli

et al. 2016

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Integrating devices with nanostructures is considered a promising strategy to improve the performance of solar energy harvesting devices such as photovoltaic (PV) devices and photo-electrochemical (PEC) solar water splitting devices. Extensive efforts have been exerted to improve the power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of such devices by utilizing novel nanostructures to revolutionize device structural designs. The thicknesses of light absorber and material consumption can be substantially reduced because of light trapping with nanostructures. Meanwhile, the utilization of nanostructures can also result in more effective carrier collection by shortening the photogenerated carrier collection path length. Nevertheless, performance optimization of nanostructured solar energy harvesting devices requires a rational design of various aspects of the nanostructures, such as their shape, aspect ratio, periodicity, etc. Without this, the utilization of nanostructures can lead to compromised device performance as the incorporation of these structures can result in defects and additional carrier recombination. The design guidelines of solar energy harvesting devices are summarized, including thin film non-uniformity on nanostructures, surface recombination, parasitic absorption, and the importance of uniform distribution of photo-generated carriers. A systematic view of the design concerns will assist better understanding of device physics and benefit the fabrication of high performance devices in the future.

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Section: Brief Review Of Light Harvesting With Nanostructuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress and Design Concerns of Nanostructured Solar Energy Harvesting Devices

Leung

Zhang

Tavakoli

et al. 2016

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“…4 shows that the reflectivities of the samples decreased compared to those of the bare plain c-Si cells in the UV-Vis wavelength range due to light scattering 16 and effective medium theory. 17 Incident light absorption can be improved by increasing the optical path length inside the c-Si solar cell via the light-trapping structure of Ag NPs. Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced optical response of crystalline silicon photovoltaic devices with integration of silver nanoparticles and ultrathin TiO2 dielectric layer

et al. 2018

AIP Advances

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Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) and the titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) dielectric layer produced by magnetron sputtering and subsequent annealing treatment, were integrated at the front side of crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. A photovoltaic device was realized based on the c-Si substrate and stacked Ag NPs/TiO 2 /n/p/Ag layer. The results show that the energy conversion efficiency (ECE) can be improved by 9.9% with the introduction of well-sized Ag NPs and an ultrathin TiO 2 dielectric layer to the c-Si solar cells. The presence of the dielectric layer enables Ag NPs to fully exert the advantage of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and light scattering, and the recombination of the photogenerated carriers originating from Ag NPs is effectively avoided at the surface or in the vicinity of Ag NPs. Moreover, COMSOL Multiphysics simulations were performed to investigate the reflection and absorption of incident light in the c-Si. The simulation results match well with the experimental data.

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“…Using these nanowires, both transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) reflectance remains below 0.1% for incident angles of up to 55° at 528 nm, exhibiting superior omnidirectionality polarizationinsensitive AR properties. [46] …”

Section: Wwwadvancedsciencenewscommentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[147] For all of these studies, no V OC or fill factor losses were observed. [46,120,[148][149][150] …”

Section: Nanostructure Layers On the Solar Device Exteriormentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Highly Efficient Nanostructured Solar Cells Using Concurrent Electrical and Optical Design

Wang

2017

Advanced Energy Materials

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For example, the multiple exciton generation (MEG) effect, observed in quantum dots (QDs), could have the potential to boost the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit from 33.7% to 44.0%. [4,5] Nanostructured absorbers, featuring subwavelength features, can achieve an absorption enhancement factor higher than the conventional ray-optic limit across a broadband range of wavelengths, which opens an entirely new way of designing highly efficient nanostructured solar cells. [6,7] Meanwhile, the utilization of nanostructures can improve carrier collection by promoting the separation of photogenerated carriers and shortening the diffusion length of charge carriers using core-shell architectures. [8] However, despite the advantages of nanostructures, at present the efficiency of these solar cells remains lower than that of first-and second-generation devices. Compared with commercially available Si wafer photovoltaics, whose energy conversion efficiency can reach 25.6%, the record energy conversion efficiency of a nanostructured Si solar cell is only 22.1%, which is still far from the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit of 32.0%. [9,10] This limited performance is due to the fact that most nanostructures bring accompanying optical or electrical losses to solar cells (Figure 1). [11][12][13][14][15] In fact, most nano-based solar cells have relatively low open-circuit voltages (V OC ) and a disproportionate enhancement of the short-circuit current density (J SC ) compared to the absorption enhancement via light-trapping nanostructures. Therefore, in order to avoid the counterbalance of optical and electrical gains by the accompanying losses associated with nanomaterials, it is necessary to look beyond singularly focused optical or electrical promotion schemes, and instead shift toward the concurrent design of electrical and optical properties using a combined perspective to achieve highly efficient nanostructured solar cells.Thus far, many excellent reviews have summarized different photon management or light-harvesting schemes with the use of nanostructures. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] These authors point out that important work remains to ensure that improved optical absorption does not come at the sacrifice of the device's electrical properties. [16,17,[19][20][21][22][23][24] However, there have been few reviews that propose a solution for how to overcome this challenge. Recently, there has been considerable effort to increase both light absorption and the photogenerated carrier collection Recent technological advances in conventional planar and microstructured solar cell architectures have significantly boosted the efficiencies of these devices near the corresponding theoretical values. Nanomaterials and nano structures have promising potential to push the theoretical limits of solar cell efficiency even higher using the intrinsic advantages associated with these materials, including efficient photon management, rapid charge transfer, and short charge collection distances. However, at present the efficiency of...

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Periodic Si Nanopillar Arrays Fabricated by Colloidal Lithography and Catalytic Etching for Broadband and Omnidirectional Elimination of Fresnel Reflection

Cited by 107 publications

References 36 publications

Progress and Design Concerns of Nanostructured Solar Energy Harvesting Devices

Progress and Design Concerns of Nanostructured Solar Energy Harvesting Devices

Enhanced optical response of crystalline silicon photovoltaic devices with integration of silver nanoparticles and ultrathin TiO2 dielectric layer

Toward Highly Efficient Nanostructured Solar Cells Using Concurrent Electrical and Optical Design

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