Enhanced Erbium-Doped Ceria Nanostructure Coating to Improve Solar Cell Performance

Materials

Michael Clavel¹  Nader Shehata¹  Effat Samir²  Soha Gaballah²  Mohammed Salah³  Kathleen Meehan⁴ 

[1] Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute State University, 302 Whittemore Hall, VA 24061, USA;Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP), Smart Critical Infrastructure (SmartCI) Research Center, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt;Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt;School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland G12 8QQ, UK;

关键词: ceria nanoparticles;    erbium dopant;    up-conversion;    conductivity;    solar cells;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma8115399

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper discusses the effect of adding reduced erbium-doped ceria nanoparticles (REDC NPs) as a coating on silicon solar cells. Reduced ceria nanoparticles doped with erbium have the advantages of both improving conductivity and optical conversion of solar cells. Oxygen vacancies in ceria nanoparticles reduce Ce4+ to Ce3+ which follow the rule of improving conductivity of solar cells through the hopping mechanism. The existence of Ce3+ helps in the down-conversion from 430 nm excitation to 530 nm emission. The erbium dopant forms energy levels inside the low-phonon ceria host to up-convert the 780 nm excitations into green and red emissions. When coating reduced erbium-doped ceria nanoparticles on the back side of a solar cell, a promising improvement in the solar cell efficiency has been observed from 15% to 16.5% due to the mutual impact of improved electric conductivity and multi-optical conversions. Finally, the impact of the added coater on the electric field distribution inside the solar cell has been studied.

【 授权许可】

Unknown