J. Mater. Sci. Technol. ›› 2015, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (2): 229-234.DOI: 10.1016/j.jmst.2014.11.003

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles    

Efficiency Enhancement of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells by Applying SiO2-PEG/PVP Antireflection Coatings

Dezeng Li1, Zhanqiang Liu2, Yaoming Wang2, Yongkui Shan1, Fuqiang Huang2, 3   

  1. 1 Department of Chemistry, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China; 2 CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China; 3 National Laboratory of Molecular Science and State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • Received:2014-05-30 Online:2015-02-20 Published:2015-07-23
  • Contact: Corresponding authors. Prof., Ph.D.; Tel.: +86 21 52411620; Fax: +86 21 52416360.E-mail addresses: wangyaoming@mail.sic.ac.cn (Y. Wang), huangfq@mail.sic.ac.cn (F. Huang).
  • Supported by:
    The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61205177, 51125006 and 61376056), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2011AA050505), and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Nos. 11JC1403400, 13JC1405700 and 14520722000).

Abstract: An effective approach was presented to enhance photoelectric conversion efficiency of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cells by using modified SiO2 antireflection coatings (ARCs) to harvest more incident sunlight. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) used as additives were introduced into silica sols to prepare SiO2-PEG and SiO2-PVP coatings in the sol-gel dip-coating process, respectively. The different effects of PEG and PVP additives on SiO2 coatings were analyzed and the antireflection performance of SiO2-PEG and SiO2-PVP coatings was investigated. The transmittance over 97% ranging from 450 nm to 700 nm with a maximum transmittance over 99.40% at about 550 nm was achieved for both SiO2-PEG2000A and SiO2-PVP0.5 coatings. The relative efficiencies of CIGS solar cells coated with SiO2-PEG2000A and SiO2-PVP0.5 ARCs were increased by 7.27% and 8.33%, respectively. The modified SiO2 ARCs possessed the advantages of the low manufacturing cost, good adhesion, superior antireflective performance and the feasible method for large area fabrication.

Key words: CIGS solar cells, Efficiency, Antireflection coatings, Sol-gel process, Polymeric additive