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In contrast to the conventional monofacial photovoltaic (PV) modules, bifacial PV modules yield more electrical energy by utilizing the reflected or scattered light from the ground and surroundings. The energy generation efficiency of bifacial modules is determined by both the front-side and the rear-side output power. In this study, we compared the IV parameters as well as field performance of different module structures to further realize the influencing factors dominating the energy gain of bifacial modules. Our results show that the glass/glass bifacial modules encapsulated with bifacial solar cells provide over 6% more energy yield compared to the glass/backsheet monofacial modules encapsulated with regular monofacial solar cells. Due to optical enhanced effects of a reflective coating on the rear glass, the energy yield gain of bifacial modules can be increased to above 10%, even though the bifaciality factors were reduced from 72% to 64%. Our study indicates that enhancing the front-side output power of bifacial modules produces more benefits.

The present paper reports Cu and Cu(Mn) films prepared layer-by-layer using an electrochemical atomic layer deposition (ECALD) method. The structure and properties of the films were investigated to elucidate their suitability as Cu interconnects for microelectronics. Previous studies have used primarily a vacuum-based atomic layer deposition to form a Cu metallized film. Herein, an entirely wet chemical process was used to fabricate a Cu film using the ECALD process by combining underpotential deposition (UPD) and surface-limited redox replacement (SLRR). The experimental results indicated that an inadequate UPD of Pb affected the subsequent SLRR of Cu and lead to the formation of PbSO 4 . A mechanism is proposed to explain the results. Layer-by-layer deposition of Cu(Mn) films was successfully performed by alternating the deposition cycle-ratios of SLRR-Cu and UPD-Mn. The proposed self-limiting growth method offers a layer-by-layer wet chemistry-based deposition capability for fabricating Cu interconnects.