1. Sunlight-thin nanophotonic monocrystalline silicon solar cells
- Author
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Inès Massiot, Jef Poortmans, Christos Trompoukis, Ivan Gordon, Wanghua Chen, Alexandre Dmitriev, Pere Roca i Cabarrocas, and Valerie Depauw
- Subjects
Materials science ,Passivation ,Silicon ,Biomedical Engineering ,Nanophotonics ,chemistry.chemical_element ,Bioengineering ,02 engineering and technology ,Quantum dot solar cell ,01 natural sciences ,Monocrystalline silicon ,Photovoltaics ,0103 physical sciences ,General Materials Science ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering ,Absorption (electromagnetic radiation) ,010302 applied physics ,business.industry ,General Chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics ,Amorphous solid ,chemistry ,Optoelectronics ,0210 nano-technology ,business - Abstract
Introducing nanophotonics into photovoltaics sets the path for scaling down the surface texture of crystalline-silicon solar cells from the micro-to the nanoscale, allowing to further boost the photon absorption while reducing silicon material loss. However, keeping excellent electrical performance has proven to be very challenging, as the absorber is damaged by the nanotexturing and the sensitivity to the surface recombination is dramatically increased. Here we realize a light-wavelength-scale nanotextured monocrystalline silicon cell with the confirmed efficiency of 8.6% and an effective thickness of only 830 nm. For this we adopt a self-assembled large-area and industry-compatible amorphous ordered nanopatterning, combined with an advanced surface passivation, earning strongly enhanced solar light absorption while retaining efficient electron collection. This prompts the development of highly efficient flexible and semitransparent photovoltaics, based on the industrially mature monocrystalline silicon technology.
- Published
- 2017
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