Electrically conductive anti‐reflecting nanostructure for chalcogenide thin‐film solar cells

Abstract

Electrically conducting aluminum (Al)-doped ZnO nanorods (NRs) film has been introduced as an anti-reflective (AR) layer for effective light trapping in chalcogenide thin-film solar cells. Results indicate that the Al-doping significantly reduced the electrical contact resistance between the Ag top electrode and the AR layer. The Al-doped ZnO NRs exhibited low average reflectance (4.5%) over the entire visible and near-infrared range, and changed the nature of electrical contact between the Ag electrode and the AR layer from Schottky to Ohmic. Finally, the CuInS 2 solar cell coated with the Aldoped ZnO NRs exhibited huge enhancement in photovoltaic efficiency from 9.57% to 11.70% due to the lowering series resistance and the increase in the short-circuit current density, when compared with that of a solar cell without the AR layer.

Enhanced omnidirectional and weatherability of Cu2ZnSnSe4 solar cells with ZnO functional nanorod arrays

“…To date, there have been many published studies on the fabrication of nanostructures as the surface antireflection layer in CIGS and CZTSe solar cells 11 – 13 . Nonetheless, most studies only focus on the changes in surface reflection and enhancement in device performance after the nanostructure are employed, while there have been hardly any weatherability tests of thin-film solar cells with surface nanostructures.…”