Scientists at Spain’s Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya (IREC) have actually produced a transparent solar battery based upon hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide. They state it might be utilized for common gadget functionalization.
“Our solar cell may be used for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), vehicle-integrated PV (VIPV), and non-intrusive transparent devices for indoor PV,” scientist Alex López García told pv publication. “It may also be utilized in agrivoltaics as an active element that simultaneously filters harmful light and harvests energy. This application will probably rely on an alternative substrate such as flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and we think that these processes can be transferred to this kind of substrates thanks to the low temperatures.”
The scientists constructed the cell with a substrate made from glass and fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO), an electron transportation layer made from aluminum-doped ZnO (AZO), an absorberd made from hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and oxide, a hole transportation layer made from molybdenum trioxide (MoO3), and an indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrode. They constructed 2 various cells with a-Si:H densities of 8 nm and 30nm.
“Intrinsic a-Si:H films present a direct bandgap usually reported at values around 1.7-1.8 eV,” they explained. “It has also been reported to be extended up to 2.1 eV via quantum confinement, when thickness is reduced to the nanometric scale.”
The 2 cells attained a power conversion effectiveness of 1.95% and 0.56%, respectively, which the Spanish group referred to as the greatest worths ever reported up until now for oxide-based transparent PV gadgets. Furthermore, the thinnest cell attained a typical noticeable transmittance (AVT) of 35.4% and the thickest of 66%.
“Use of substrates with sizes up to 5 cm2 x 5 cm2have allowed to achieve good statistics to analyze the reproducibility of the results when working with 0.07 cm2 active area devices that have been defined using a metallic shadow mask during ITO deposition,” the academics said. “A first attempt for process upscaling has also been done with the fabrication of a 5 cm2 x 5 cm2 solar cell. However, even in this case the devices show a dramatic drop in the device efficiency to values lower than 0.1%.”
The researchers acknowledged that the next action in their research study will be to establish transparent solar batteries with high AVT worths, while all at once attempting to increase effectiveness.
“At this time we are basically at low technology readiness level (TRL) and the paper serves as proof of concept,” López García explained. “As transparent PV yields lower efficiency than conventional opaque PV, it will not be just enough to prove that devices work. It will be paramount to use robust processes with nanometric control and homogeneity. Furthermore, it will be important to use low-cost and non-critical-raw materials. In our work, we use oxide materials and silicon, which are earth-abundant and cheap.”
The research study group explained the cell in “Ultrathin a-Si:H/oxide transparent solar cells exhibiting UV-blue selective-like absorption,” which was just recently released in RRL Solar.
“Commercial production is being envisaged,” López García said. “However, we must still carry out more research as we believe that further optimization is possible. With time we should move to industrial collaboration in order to translate all the research efforts into real-life products.”
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