Photon management by scratch-resistant antireflection coating for the efficiency enhancement of silicon solar cell

摘要

Antireflection coating (ARC) plays a crucial role in many solar and optical applications. ARC with mechanical robustness was developed to achieve more efficiency for the photovoltaic system cover glasses, by depositing porous Vinyltriethoxysilane/Pluronic F-127-based coating via spin coating technique. The coating shows maximum transparency around 93% in the visible region (400-800 nm). The mechanical robustness of the coating was analyzed using a pencil scratch test as per the ASTM standard D 3363-05 and it showed good stability against a 9H hardness pencil. The porous coating exhibited an enhanced conversion efficiency of 10.56% as compared to the bare glass of efficiency 9.71%; which validate the light-trapping ability of the coating in the visible region. Also, the coating sustains the efficiency of the solar cell even during dust exposure due to its good self-cleaning ability with water contact angle of 112 degrees. It is also noteworthy that the prepared ARC shows UV stability under the UV-B lamp for 72 hours. The ARC developed in this study opens a promising approach to harvest renewable solar energy for photovoltaic systems.