Enhanced angular characteristics of indium tin oxide nanowhisker-coated silicon solar cells

Abstract

Omnidirectional and broadband light harvesting is critical to photovoltaics due to the sun's movement and its wide spectral range of radiation. In this work, we demonstrate distinctive indium-tin-oxide nanowhiskers that achieve superior angular and spectral characteristics for crystalline silicon solar cells using angle-resolved reflectance spectroscopy. The solar-spectrum weighted reflectance is well below 6% for incident angles of up to 70° and for the wavelength range between 400nm and 1000nm. As a result, the nanowhisker coated solar cell exhibits broadband quantum efficiency characteristics and enhanced short-circuit currents for large angles of incidence.

Liquid crystal terahertz phase shifters with functional indium-tin-oxide nanostructures for biasing and alignment

“…In the visible band, indium-tin-oxide (ITO) nanomaterials, e.g., nanocolumn, nanorods (NRs), nanowires, and nanowhiskers (NWhs), with their omnidirectional, broadband anti-reflective properties, and superhydrophilicity, have been widely employed as transparent electrodes in a wide range of optoelectronic devices. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] In the THz band, we showed that ITO NWhs also exhibit superb transparency ($82%).…”

“…Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies revealed that the trunk of such ITO NWhs exhibits a coreshell structure, where the core is composed of crystalline In 2 O 3 and the shell is tin-doped InO x in amorphous phase. 12,14 The branches of ITO NWhs are also made of purely crystalline In 2 O 3 . We estimated the length distribution of the ITO NWhs from the SEM image.…”

Broadband terahertz conductivity and optical transmission of indium-tin-oxide (ITO) nanomaterials

“…More recently, ITO nanomaterials, e.g. nanocolumn, nanorods (NRs), nanowires, nanodots, and nanowhiskers (NWhs), are reported to have the omnidirectional, broadband anti-reflective (AR) characteristics, and superhydrophilicity for improving the function of solar cells [6][7][8][9][10][11][12], light emitting diodes (LEDs) [13,14], organic LEDs [15], and displays [16]. Further, the ITO NWhs were found to exhibit superb terahertz (THz) transparency, mobility, and comparable conductivities to sputtered thin films [17].…”

Zinc Oxide Sub-Wavelength Structures as Antireflective Layer for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

“…However, it is not able to cover a wide range of the solar spectrum. In recent years, multilayer antireflection coatings have been studied which can fulfill wide wavelength range than SLARC [3][4][5][6]. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to associate with the different coating materials well and various physical-chemical properties will result in some problems, such as adhesion, thermal mismatch and the stability of the thin-film stack [7].…”