Glass slides or solar cells. Which are better to improve solar energy efficiency?

摘要

Coating obtained by the sol-gel methodology and applied on commercial solar cells (SC) and glass slides (GS) was studied. Silica doped with Er~(3+)/Yb~(3+) 1∶4 was used to coat the SC and GS with one, two, or three layers by the dip-coating technique, followed by heat treatment at 100, 200, or 300 °C for 20 min. Trans-mittance analyses of the GS showed transparency above 80%. The absorption spectra of SC revealed a shift in the absorption band. Photoluminescence allowed variation in the SC and GS fluorescence intensity ratio (FIR) after coating and heat treatment to be investigated. Electrical measurements of the GS showed that the potential ranged from 0.3 to 0.5 mW. Electrical analyses of the SC provided the best potential results, 1.89 and 1.60 mW for the SC-3-100 and SC-3-300 samples, respectively. Therefore, coating transparency influenced solar cell efficiency, and the method proved promising; all the syntheses in SC provided the highest absorption.