Facile Synthesis of ZrO₂–SiO₂ Antireflective Films with Good Mechanical Performances for Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Antireflective (AR) films are widely applied in solar cells to reduce the reflectivity toward sunlight, thus improving the photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells. However, AR films are still suffering from poor mechanical properties and low transmittance in photovoltaic applications. Herein, a ZrO2–SiO2 composite film with enhanced mechanical properties was successfully synthesized by a facile sol–gel method, whose pencil hardness increased from less than 6B to B compared with the pure SiO2 film synthesized with the same alkali-catalyzed method. Moreover, the ZrO2–SiO2 film with a Zr/Si mole ratio (n Zr/Si) of 0.06 exhibited a high transmittance gain (ΔT) of 3.0%, and an obvious increase (1.32%) in PCE was observed in a perovskite solar cell compared with the cell covered by a bare glass. Additionally, both the short-circuit current density (J SC) and PCE of perovskite solar cells have a non-linear increasing relationship with the average transmittance (Tavg) of the ZrO2–SiO2 composite film. In this sense, this work can provide a facile way to prepare AR films effectively improving performances of solar cells.

Enhanced uniformity of zirconia coating for high power lasers via solvent replacement and PEG-doping

“…Among the high re ective materials, zirconia had been studied by many scientists due to its excellent performance [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Zirconia had high refractive index, low absorption and low dispersion in visible and near-infrared regions, good chemical stability and good thermal stability.…”

“…Zirconia had high refractive index, low absorption and low dispersion in visible and near-infrared regions, good chemical stability and good thermal stability. There were researches to improve the LIDT of zirconia coatings [24,[26][27][28]. Zhu et al [26] reported that ZrO 2 coating with ZrOCl 2 •8H 2 O as the precursor and copolymer of silicone and polyaldoxyl ether as the additive had high resistance to laser-induced damage.…”

“…After annealing at in-situ high temperature of 523 K, its LIDT was 23.9 J/cm 2 (@1064 nm, 12 ns). Shen et al [27] used ZrOCl 2 •8H 2 O as the precursor, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as additive to obtain ZrO 2 composite coating. When the PVP content was about 25 wt.%, the refractive index of ZrO 2 composite coating was about 1.70, and its LIDT was 20 J/cm 2 (@1064 nm, 1ns).…”