Rough glass by 3d texture transfer for silicon thin film solar cells

Abstract

Textured glass is prepared by ion beam treatment using wet chemically etched ZnO film as three dimensional etching mask. The shape and rms roughness of the textured glass can be adjusted by changing the initial ZnO thickness, wet‐chemical etching duration and ion beam etching parameters. The maximum rms roughness we achieved is 228 nm, with lateral feature size larger than 2 μm. The glass texturing process allows to study scattering already at the glass/TCO interface to enhance the refractive index step from rough material to silicon. First microcrystalline silicon thin film solar cells grown on the textured glass reveal certain light trapping effect with a short circuit current density up to 20 mA/cm2. (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Micromorph thin-film silicon solar cells with transparent high-mobility hydrogenated indium oxide front electrodes

“…1,4,5 To achieve high efficiencies with thin-film silicon solar cells, the optical and electrical properties of the transparent front electrodes are decisive. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Transparency and conductivity are directly interlinked via the carrier density: a large number of electrons causes strong parasitic light absorption in the near-infrared region (free carrier absorption), whereas an insufficient number of free electrons leads to heavy Ohmic losses. A smart solution for improving the transparency of the front electrode, without compromising its conductivity, is the use of high-mobility transparent conductive oxides (TCO).…”

Effect of aluminum thickness and etching time of aluminum induced texturing process on soda lime glass substrates for thin solar cell applications

“…However, efficiency of a-Si:H is lower than c-Si solar cells, which requires effective light trapping scheme to increase the efficiency, especially around cut-off wavelength [1][2][3][4][5]. To increase the efficiency of a-Si:H solar cells, texturing transparent conductive oxide (TCO) on flat substrate is used commercially to obtain efficient light trapping scheme [1]. However, additional textured surfaces can provide more scattering and thus, optical path can be enhanced and optical absorption can be increased [6,7].…”

“…a-Si:H solar cells have higher absorption coefficient as compared to wafer based Si solar cells and thus, thinner absorber layer is enough to fabricate a solar cell. However, efficiency of a-Si:H is lower than c-Si solar cells, which requires effective light trapping scheme to increase the efficiency, especially around cut-off wavelength [1][2][3][4][5]. To increase the efficiency of a-Si:H solar cells, texturing transparent conductive oxide (TCO) on flat substrate is used commercially to obtain efficient light trapping scheme [1].…”

Influence of deposition conditions and substrate morphology on the electrical properties of sputtered ZnO:Al grown on texture-etched glass

“…Furthermore, reactive ion etching leads to suitable surface morphologies [17,18]. Additionally, rough glass is obtained by ion beam treatment of a sputter-etched ZnO:Al mask, thereby transferring the ZnO:Al texture into the glass [19]. Textured glass was also obtained by aluminum induced texturization [20].…”