In this paper a novel anti-reflection (AR) coating based on silicon nano-bars is designed and its impact on the performance of crystalline silicon (c-Si) thin-film solar cells is extensively studied. Silicon nano-bars with optimized size and period are embedded on top of the active layer, under a 100nm Si3N4 layer. As a result of the proposed layer stack, an inhomogeneous intermediate layer wit...

During the last two decades, the Institute of Microtechnology (IMT) has contributed in two important fields to future thin-film silicon solar cell processing and design: (1) In 1987, IMT introduced the so-called ‘‘very high frequency glow discharge (VHF-GD)’’ technique, a method that leads to a considerable enhancement in the deposition rate of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon layers. As ...

This work demonstrates the fabrication of silicide/silicon based solar cell towards the development of low cost and environmental friendly photovoltaic technology. A heterostructure solar cells using metallic alpha phase (α-phase) aluminum alloyed iron silicide (FeSi(Al)) on n-type silicon is fabricated with an efficiency of 0.8%. The fabricated device has an open circuit voltage and fill-facto...

Surface plasmons, which exist along the interface of a metal and a dielectric, have been proposed as an efficient alternative method for light trapping in solar cells during the past ten years. With unique properties such as superior light scattering, optical trapping, guide mode coupling, near field concentration, and hot-electron generation, metallic nanoparticles or nanostructures can be tai...

Perovskite solar cells with transparent contacts may be used to compensate for thermalization losses of silicon solar cells in tandem devices. This offers a way to outreach stagnating efficiencies. However, perovskite top cells in tandem structures require contact layers with high electrical conductivity and optimal transparency. We address this challenge by implementing large-area graphene gro...

The dehydrogenation of intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) at temperatures above approximately 300 °C degrades its ability to passivate silicon wafer surfaces. This limits the temperature of post-passivation processing steps during the fabrication of advanced silicon heterojunction or silicon-based tandem solar cells. We demonstrate that a hydrogen plasma can rehydrogenate intrins...

In this study, we demonstrated a self-deposition method to deposit Pt nanoparticles (NPs) on graphene woven fabrics (GWF) to improve the performance of graphene-on-silicon solar cells. The deposition of Pt NPs increased the work function of GWF and reduced the sheet resistance of GWF, thereby improving the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of graphene-on-silicon solar cells. The PCE (>10%) was ...