Today, Solar cell technology is in limited use due to the relatively high manufacturing cost of silicon based technology, And the low power efficiency of organic polymer based technology. However, Research is being done on hybrid cells based on dye-sensitizing organic polymers and a thin transparent conducting oxide layer comprised of nanoparticles. These cells could offer the same ease of manu...

A hybrid approach to solar cells is demonstrated in which a silicon p-n junction, used in conventional silicon-based photovoltaics, is replaced by a room-temperature fabricated silicon/organic heterojunction. The unique advantage of silicon/organic heterojunction is that it exploits the cost advantage of organic semiconductors and the performance advantages of silicon to enable potentially low-...

This report describes recent aspects of advanced inorganic materials for photovoltaics or solar cell applications. Specific materials examined will be high-efficiency silicon, gallium arsenide and related materials, and thin-film materials, particularly amorphous silicon and (polycrystalline) copper indium selenide. Some of the advanced concepts discussed include multijunction III-V (and thin-f...

Efficiencies of large area n-type silicon solar cells with a screen printed rear side aluminum-alloyed emitter are mainly limited by their front surface recombination velocity. The front surface therefore has to be passivated by an effective passivation layer combined with a front surface field (FSF). In this work we investigate the influence of the front surface passivation quality and the bas...

Silicon nanorod based radial-junction solar cells are competitive alternatives to traditional planar silicon solar cells. In various silicon nanorods, nanocone is always considered to be better than nanowire in light-absorption. Nevertheless, we find that this notion isn't absolutely correct. Silicon nanocone is indeed significantly superior over nanowire in light-concentration due to its conti...

We demonstrate that with only 1 lm, equivalent bulk thickness, of crystalline silicon, sculpted into the form of a slanted conical-pore photonic crystal and placed on a silver back-reflector, it is possible to attain a maximum achievable photocurrent density (MAPD) of 35.5 mA/cm 2 from impinging sunlight. This corresponds to absorbing roughly 85% of all available sunlight in the wavelength rang...

Silicon (Si)-based solar cell is by far the most established solar cell technology. The surface of a Si solar cell is usually covered by a layer of transparent material to protect the device from corrosion, contamination and mechanical damage. Here, we replaced this protection layer by a thin layer film of polydimethysiloxane nanowires. Based on this layer and using the conductive layer on the ...

Standard surface passivation schemes for crystalline silicon solar cells use SiO2 or SiNx. The c-Si surface passivation mechanisms related with these schemes have been elucidated within the framework of interface recombination modeled by an extended SRH formalism: interface recombination centers characteristic of the SiO2 passivation have larger electron (e) than hole (h) capture cross sections...

As silicon photovoltaics evolve towards thin-wafer technologies, efficient optical absorption for the near-infrared wavelengths has become particularly challenging. In this work, we present a solution that employs combined micro- and nano-scale surface textures to increase light harvesting in the near-infrared for crystalline silicon photovoltaics, and discuss the associated antireflection and ...