Quantification and Validation of the Efficiency Enhancement Reached by Application of a Retroreflective Light Trapping Texture on a Polymer Solar Cell

Esiner, S Serkan; Bus, Tom; Wienk, MM Martijn; Hermans, Ko; Janssen, Raj René

doi:10.1002/aenm.201300227

Cited by 52 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The efficient light trapping has been also demonstrated in the dimensions orders of magnitude larger than the wavelength. A 1 mm thick polymeric retroreflective textured sheet can be optimized in a way to suppress light escape from the design and a 19% enhancement in efficiency of a thin film polymer solar cell . Alongside these designed structures, organic fiber based paper has been found as an excellent option to enhance light trapping in thin film solar cells .…”

Section: Light Trapping Schemesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Ghobadi

Özbay

2019

Advanced Optical Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

throughput and large-scale compatibility. The photoactive material is generally composed of single or multiple semiconductor layers responsible for harvesting solar energy. This harvested solar irradiation can be used to generate electricity using photovoltaic (PV) devices, or it can be converted to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen which is the case for photoelectrochemical water splitting (PEC-WS). In both PV and PEC-WS applications, the ultimate goal is to establish an efficient photon capturing and electron collecting scheme to generate a huge number of photocarriers (including electron-hole pairs) with rational carrier dynamics (efficient charge generation, separation, and collection). This means that the device should be optically thick enough to generate high carrier's density and electrically thin enough to collect photogenerated carrier before they recombine. When light impinges a semiconductor surface, a part of the light is reflected back due to the mismatch between the air and the semiconductor layer refractive index. The rest will propagate within the bulk until it is fully absorbed by the semiconductor slab. The optical penetration depth (LPD) is defined as the depth at which the incident power falls to 1/e (≈37%) of its input value. This parameter differs from one semiconductor to another and it depends on the extinction coefficient (κ) of the In both photovoltaic (PV) and photoelectrochemical water splitting (PEC-WS) solar conversion devices, the ultimate aim is to design highly efficient, low cost, and large-scale compatible cells. To achieve this goal, the main step is the efficient coupling of light into active layer. This can be obtained in bulkysemiconductor-based designs where the active layer thickness is larger than light penetration depth. However, most low-bandgap semiconductors have a carrier diffusion length much smaller than the light penetration depth. Thus, photogenerated electron-hole pairs will recombine within the semiconductor bulk. Therefore, an efficient design should fully harvest light in dimensions in the order of the carriers' diffusion length to maximize their collection probability. For this aim, in recent years, many studies based on metasurfaces and metamaterials were conducted to obtain broadband and near-unity light absorption in subwavelength ultrathin semiconductor thicknesses. This review summarizes these strategies in five main categories: light trapping based on i) strong interference in planar multilayer cavities, ii) metal nanounits, iii) dielectric units, iv) designed semiconductor units, and v) trapping scaffolds. The review highlights recent studies in which an ultrathin active layer has been coupled to the above-mentioned trapping schemes to maximize the cell optical performance.

show abstract

Section: Light Trapping Schemesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Ghobadi

Özbay

2019

Advanced Optical Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Incident photon absorption can be effectively enhanced by introducing microstructure on the front surface of OPV devices along the incident direction, including gratings, self-assembled nanoholes, random scatters, apertures, microlenses and refractive structures [81][82][83][84][85]. The proposed nanostructures with optimized geometric parameters can reduce the reflection loss of the incident photons, increase the optical path length and enhance the incoupling efficiency in OPVs.…”

Section: Nanostructures Improve Light Incidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The proposed nanostructures with optimized geometric parameters can reduce the reflection loss of the incident photons, increase the optical path length and enhance the incoupling efficiency in OPVs. For example, Janssen et al [81] have applied a polymeric retroreflective textured sheet onto the backside of the glass substrate in OPVs. The retroreflective textured sheet consisted of an array of tilted cubic structures with hundreds microscale as shown in Figure 6A, which was fabricated from a cross-linked poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) using a replication technique with a metal mold.…”

Section: Nanostructures Improve Light Incidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Nanostructures induced light harvesting enhancement in organic photovoltaics

Feng

et al. 2017

Nanophotonics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lightweight and low-cost organic photovoltaics (OPVs) hold great promise as renewable energy sources. The most critical challenge in developing high-performance OPVs is the incomplete photon absorption due to the low diffusion length of the carrier in organic semiconductors. To date, various attempts have been carried out to improve light absorption in thin photoactive layer based on optical engineering strategies. Nanostructureinduced light harvesting in OPVs offers an attractive solution to realize high-performance OPVs, via the effects of antireflection, plasmonic scattering, surface plasmon polarization, localized surface plasmon resonance and optical cavity. In this review article, we summarize recent advances in nanostructure-induced light harvesting in OPVs and discuss various light-trapping strategies by incorporating nanostructures in OPVs and the fabrication processing of the micro-patterns with high resolution, large area, high yield and low cost.

show abstract

“…One of the major obstacles for the application of such thin-film PVs is their relatively low light-absorption capacity, which results from their nanometer scale active layer thickness. Although various types of light-trapping schemes have been proposed for enhanced light absorption [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], there still remains much room for improvement, in particular since most light-trapping schemes are optimized only for normal incident angle. For BIPV, the annual incident angle strongly deviates from the normal direction and largely depends on installation conditions, such as the local latitude and facing direction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of asymmetrically textured structure for efficient light trapping in building-integrated photovoltaics

Kang

Cho

Lee

2015

Organic Electronics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Quantification and Validation of the Efficiency Enhancement Reached by Application of a Retroreflective Light Trapping Texture on a Polymer Solar Cell

Cited by 52 publications

References 31 publications

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Nanostructures induced light harvesting enhancement in organic photovoltaics

Design of asymmetrically textured structure for efficient light trapping in building-integrated photovoltaics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About