Recent Applications of Antireflection Coatings in Solar Cells

Nanowire-based multifunctional antireflection coatings for solar cells.

Organic (P3HT/PCBM) solar cells are coated with ZnO nanowires as antireflection coatings and show up to 36% enhancement in efficiency. The improvement is ascribed to an effective refractive index which results in Fabry-Perot absorption bands which match the polymer band-gap. The effect is particularly pronounced at high light incidence angles. Simultaneously, the coating is used as a UV-barrier...

Design Multilayer Antireflection Coatings for Terrestrial Solar Cells

In order to analyze the influence of methods to design antireflection coatings (ARCs) on reflectivity of broadband solar cells, we provide detailed analyses about the ARC coupled with a window layer and the refractive index dispersion effect of each layer. By multidimensional matrix data simulation, two methods were employed to measure the composite reflection of a SiO2/ZnS double-layer ARC wit...

Development of Nanostructured Antireflection Coatings for EO/IR Sensor and Solar Cell Applications

Electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors and photovoltaic power sources are being developed for a variety of defense and commercial applications. One of the critical technologies that will enhance both EO/IR sensor and photovoltaic module performance is the development of high quality nanostructure-based antireflection coatings. In this paper, we review our work on advanced antireflection struc...

Light trapping in thin-film solar cells via scattering by nanostructured antireflection coatings

Large integrated absorption enhancement in plasmonic solar cells by combining metallic gratings and antireflection coatings.

We describe an ultrathin solar cell architecture that combines the benefits of both plasmonic photovoltaics and traditional antireflection coatings. Spatially resolved electron generation rates are used to determine the total integrated current improvement under AM1.5G solar illumination, which can reach a factor of 1.8. The frequency-dependent absorption is found to strongly correlate with the...