Improvement Optical and Electrical Characteristics of Thin Film Solar Cells Using Nanotechnology Techniques

Improving the optical properties of thin film plasmonic solar cells of InP absorber layer using nanowires

In this paper, a thin-film InP-based solar cell designed and simulated. The proposed InP solar cell has a periodic array of plasmonic back-reflector, which consists of a silver layer and two silver nanowires. The indium tin oxide (ITO) layer also utilized as an anti-reflection coating (ARC) layer on top. The design creates a light-trapping structure by using a plasmonic back-reflector and an an...

Modelling and Degradation Characteristics of Thin-film CIGS Solar Cells

Thin-film Silicon Solar Cells

The simplest semiconductor junction that is used in solar cells for separating photogenerated charge carriers is the p-n junction, an interface between the p-type region and ntype region of one semiconductor. Therefore, the basic semiconductor property of a material, the possibility to vary its conductivity by doping, has to be demonstrated first before the material can be considered as a suita...

Improvement of optical transmittance and electrical properties for the Si quantum dot-embedded ZnO thin film

A Si quantum dot (QD)-embedded ZnO thin film is successfully fabricated on a p-type Si substrate using a ZnO/Si multilayer structure. Its optical transmittance is largely improved when increasing the annealing temperature, owing to the phase transformation from amorphous to nanocrystalline Si QDs embedded in the ZnO matrix. The sample annealed at 700°C exhibits not only high optical transmittan...

Nanotechnology-enhanced Thin-film Solar Cells: Analysis of Global Research Activities with Future Prospects

Nanotechnology-enhanced, thin-film solar cells are a promising and potentially important emerging technology. This paper examines global research patterns to assess development prospects. We apply the “tech mining” approach to R&D publications in this field. Records are compiled from Web of Science for the time period 2001-08. These indicate that the United States (US) is the leading author on ...