How to enhance the efficiency of the semi-transparent solar cell?
The efficiency of the semi-transparent solar cell (st-OSC) is relative low as compared to its opaque one because of the single pass of light and reduction of active layer absorption. To improve the efficiency of st-OSC, there are various ways to improve the light incoupling and trapping. Beside the incorporation of 1D photonic crystal under glass as the reflector in particular spectral region, we have recently proposed a hybrid transparent electrode based on the metal/nanopartiles/dielectic (M/NP/D) (i.e. Ag thin film/ Si NP/ Alq3 coating layer ) to improve the light incoupling of thin Ag film and efficiency of st-OSC, [1] are there any other methods to improve st-OSC efficiency?
[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2015.08.014
How to enhance the efficiency of the semi-transparent solar cell?
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2015.08.014
Article Optically enhanced semi-transparent organic solar Cells thro...
Dear Xingang,
Before i make a proposition how to increase the photons absorption in semi transparent solar cells, i wonder why one tries such types of solar cells as one of the necessary conditions for efficient solar cell active material is its ability to absorb the sufficiently the incident solar gradation and also not reflect it at the surface. There are many materials which work as a good absorber of the incident solar radiation.
Now i come to my proposal which may enhance the absorbed portion of the incident solar radiation. The idea of the solution is to increase the optical path. You can use the idea of wave guiding to guide the optical beams in the active material. The light can be collected in beams and fed from the sides of active layer sandwiched between two fully reflecting walls. The reflecting walls may be from materials with smaller dielectric constant or from metal.
Dear Abdelhalim,
Thanks for your proposed solutions.
For the motivation of improving the efficiency of semi-transparent solar cell, i think one of the advantages by this type cell can absorb incident light from both top- and bottom- illuminations. In fact, for the bifacial photovoltaic modules, it could generate about 20~30% extra power energy by further exploiting the diffused and reflected light. In addition, the display color of the cell can also be tuned for potential usage of decorations.
Guide the optical beam in the active materials may be a good solutions, but I have a question for it. since the contrast of refractive index for the active materials and carrier transport materials is not very large, what about the confinement of waveguide mode in active layer? However, the active materials sandwiched in between two metal mirror forming a microcavity do improve the light absorption.
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