Efficient and Flexible Thin Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells on Nanotextured Polymer Substrate Using Sol–gel Based Nanoimprinting Method

Abstract

The mechanical flexibility of substrates and controllable nanostructures are two major considerations in designing high‐performance, flexible thin‐film solar cells. In this work, we proposed an approach to realize highly ordered metal oxide nanopatterns on polyimide (PI) substrate based on the sol‐gel chemistry and soft thermal nanoimprinting lithography. Thin‐film amorphous silicon (a‐Si:H) solar cells were subsequently constructed on the patterned PI flexible substrates. The periodic nanopatterns delivered broadband‐enhanced light absorption and quantum efficiency, as well as the eventual power conversion efficiency (PCE). The nanotextures also benefit for the device yield and mechanical flexibility, which experienced little efficiency drop even after 100,000 bending cycles. In addition, flexible, transparent nanocone films, obtained by a template process, were attached onto the patterned PI solar cells, serving as top anti‐reflection layers. The PCE performance with these dual‐interfacial patterns rose up to 8.17%, that is, it improved by 48.5% over the planar device. Although the work was conducted on a‐Si:H material, our proposed scheme can be extended to a variety of active materials for different optoelectronic applications.

Research Progress in Organic Photomultiplication Photodetectors

“…In most of the work, the stabilities of the organic PM devices are not discussed, which is crucial to solve before putting them into practical applications. Moreover, the introduction of metal micro/nano structures into organic PM photodetectors should be consolidated with more attention as a feasible approach of manipulating the carrier generation and distribution like in organic solar cells [ 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 ]. It is emphasized that, recently, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite photodetectors have also been reported with extremely high quantum efficiency [ 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 ] of which the principles were explained based on the trapped carrier assisted carrier tunneling or ion migration effect.…”

Silicon Thin Films: Functional Materials for Energy, Healthcare, and IT Applications

“…Among the various types of thin‐film technology, thin‐film silicon offers several advantages: 1) relatively low process temperatures, below 200 °C, by using plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) from the gas phase, making the preparation process compatible with a wider choice of substrates, especially low cost plastics or paper substrates; 2) the PECVD process can readily be scaled up, enabling large area and high throughput manufacturing by roll‐to‐roll processing, 3) particularly thin layers may be used, in conjunction with the high mechanical flexibility of thin film silicon …”

Fabrication and Replication of Periodic Nanopyramid Structures by Laser Interference Lithography and UV Nanoimprint Lithography for Solar Cells Applications

“…NIL's ability to provide high-resolution, high-throughput, low-cost, and highly repeatable patterning of nanoscale structures offers potential benefits to numerous electrical, optical, photonic, magnetic, and biological applications. These include hybrid plastic electronics [12], organic laser [13], organic light-emitting diode (OLED) pixels [14], nanoelectronics devices in Si [15], nanoscale protein patterning [16], high-density quantized magnetic disks [17], broadband polarizers [18], manipulating DNA in nanofluidic channels [19] and solar cells [20][21][22]. In this study, UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) process was mainly used to replicate nanopyramid structures for solar cell applications.…”