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• Deposition reduction of different dust on solar cells by super-hydrophobic coatings was investigated. • The self-cleaning coatings are effective to improve the transmittance and the PV efficiency. • The self-cleaning coating has the best power efficiency improvement performance for the dust C. • The coatings are effective to decrease deposition density of dust from the southern China. This paper aims to examine deposition reduction performance of different types of dust on solar PV cells by the self-cleaning coatings. Four types of dust were obtained from the Powder Technology Inc. USA (Dust A), the Henan province in the central China (Dust B), the Guangzhou city in the Southern China (Dust C) and the sand in the construction site (Dust D), respectively. The micro and macro patterns of particles, the particle deposition density, the transmittance and the output power reduction of PV system after dust deposition were investigated carefully. It was found that the particle deposition density on the solar cell covering glass is obviously decreased by the coating. The deposition density of the sand particles is 36.77% of that on the uncoated glass case, which is the minimum among the four types of dust because of the high Young's modulus and low surface energy of the sand. The self-cleaning coating has the best power efficiency improvement performance for the dust C (about 24.35%), followed by the dust B (about 19.83%) and dust D (about 18.21%). The dust A has the minimum efficiency improvement (about 12.47%) by the super-hydrophobic coating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]