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ZnO Nanorods as Antireflective Coatings for Industrial‐Scale Single‐Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells
Author(s) -
Aurang Pantea,
Demircioglu Olgu,
Es Firat,
Turan Rasit,
Unalan Husnu Emrah
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/jace.12200
Subject(s) - nanorod , passivation , materials science , crystalline silicon , optoelectronics , silicon , anti reflective coating , nanotechnology , solar cell , fabrication , coating , layer (electronics) , chemical engineering , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , engineering
In this work, both planar and textured, industrial scale (156 mm × 156 mm) single‐crystalline silicon ( Si ) solar cells have been fabricated using zinc oxide ( ZnO ) nanorods as antireflection coating ( ARC ). ZnO nanorods were grown in a few minutes via hydrothermal method within a commercially available microwave oven. Relative improvement in excess of 65% in the reflectivity was observed for both planar and textured Si surfaces. Through ZnO nanorods, effective lifetime (τ eff ) measurements were presented to investigate the surface passivation property of such an ARC layer. ZnO nanorods increased the τ eff from 9 to 71 μs at a carrier injection level of 10 15 cm −3 . Increased carrier lifetime revealed the passivation effect of the ZnO nanorods in addition to their ARC property. 33% and 16% enhancement in the photovoltaic conversion efficiency was obtained in planar and textured single‐crystalline solar cells, respectively. Our results reveal the potential of ZnO nanorods as ARC that can be deposited through simple solution‐based methods and the method investigated herein can be simply adapted to industrial scale fabrication.