Thin Film Silicon Photovoltaic Cells on Paper for Flexible Indoor Applications

Abstract

The present development of non‐wafer‐based photovoltaics (PV) allows supporting thin film solar cells on a wide variety of low‐cost recyclable and flexible substrates such as paper, thereby extending PV to a broad range of consumer‐oriented disposable applications where autonomous energy harvesting is a bottleneck issue. However, their fibrous structure makes it challenging to fabricate good‐performing inorganic PV devices on such substrates. The advances presented here demonstrate the viability of fabricating thin film silicon PV cells on paper coated with a hydrophilic mesoporous layer. Such layer can not only withstand the cells production temperature (150 °C), but also provide adequate paper sealing and surface finishing for the cell's layers deposition. The substances released from the paper substrate are continuously monitored during the cell deposition by mass spectrometry, which allows adapting the procedures to mitigate any contamination from the substrate. In this way, a proof‐of‐concept solar cell with 3.4% cell efficiency (41% fill factor, 0.82 V open‐circuit voltage and 10.2 mA cm−2 short‐circuit current density) is attained, opening the door to the use of paper as a reliable substrate to fabricate inorganic PV cells for a plethora of indoor applications with tremendous impact in multi‐sectorial fields such as food, pharmacy and security.

Optimal-Enhanced Solar Cell Ultra-thinning with Broadband Nanophotonic Light Capture

“…Dividing the resulting AZO volume by its covered area ( A AZO ) yields a volume-equivalent layer thickness ( t eq = V AZO /A AZO ) equal to 319, 490, and 387 nm, respectively, for the AZO LT structures on the 100-nm and 300-nm a-Si and 1.5-μm c-Si cells. Such t eq values are considerably higher than the layer thicknesses used in conventional flat TCO front contacts, which typically range from 60–80 nm (as in the reference ARC cases considered here) to 200–250 nm in n-i-p thin-film Si cells ( Grandidier et al., 2012 , Morawiec et al., 2014 , Águas et al., 2015 , Mendes et al., 2015 ), depending on the TCO material. Higher layer thicknesses lead to detrimental optical losses with flat TCOs, but not with photonic-structured TCOs as those optimized here.…”

Ionic Conductive Cellulose Mats by Solution Blow Spinning as Substrate and a Dielectric Interstrate Layer for Flexible Electronics

“…The typical PEO degradation peak at ≈210 °C appears only in the CA-PEO curve, indicating a possible removal of this additive in deacetylation . A steep weight loss occurs for higher temperatures due to cellulose and CA decomposition . Deacetylation also induced recrystallization of the cellulose fibers, as observed in the X-ray diffraction (XRD) diffractograms in Figure S5 in the Supporting Information.…”

Constructing Electrophoretic Displays on Foldable Paper-Based Electrodes by a Facile Transferring Method

“…Generally, coating ink on paper involves problems of ink absorption and penetration, which is caused by the porosities and rough surfaces of paper. Attempts to avoid such issues commonly include coating a buffer layer on paper. ,, In contrast, the issues of ink coating on paper are avoided by our proposed OCA transfer strategy. Moreover, OCA plays a buffer role to minimize the conductive degradation of AgNWs under bending states (Figure S2).…”