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Advanced Energy Materials and Structures for Solar Cell: Design and Application

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 February 2024) | Viewed by 4352

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Martin Møller Greve

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Interests: solar cell; photovoltaics; nanophotonic; plasmonics; nanofabrication; nanotechnology; material science
Dr. Nima E. Gorji

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Manufacturing, Tech. University Dublin, D15YV78 Dublin, Ireland
Interests: solar cells; photovoltaics; nano-fabrication; optoelectronics; solid-state electronics; semiconductor physics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Solar cells, for direct conversion of solar energy to electrical power, is one of the key components in the required transition to renewable energy sources for minimizing climate changes. Even though solar cells have been commercially available for more than 50 years, and installations are rapidly increasing world wide, they are still somewhat limited in efficiency. Over the years a wide variety of new materials and solar cell designs has been explored to push efficiency limits. Emerging solar cell structures are being proposed by different research groups world-wide to develop thinner (ultrathin) and flexible solar cells but still with a high conversion efficiency and performance stability with novel and environment friendly materials. Perovskite is a popular example, but new materials are constantly being investigated and attract attention for photovoltaic applications such as transition metal oxides and kesterite sulfides. Nanotechnology and nanostructures have demonstrated promising pathways for pushing conversion efficiencies even further, and record-breaking efficiencies have been demonstrated using tandem solar cell technology. The continued research on photovoltaics is of critical importance. In this special issue we call for papers focusing on the cutting edge, and advancement, in the field of solar cell research and photovoltaics.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit papers for this special issue. We accept full papers, communications, technical development papers and reviews.

Dr. Martin Møller Greve
Dr. Nima E. Gorji
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • thin-film solar cells
  • perovskite solar cells
  • tandem solar cells
  • bi-layer solar cells
  • perovskite
  • kesterite
  • nanostructured solar cells
  • graphene
  • photovoltaics
  • nano-fabrication

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 4287 KiB  
Article
Design and Optimization of a Self-Protected Thin Film c-Si Solar Cell against Reverse Bias
by Omar M. Saif, Abdelhalim Zekry, Ahmed Shaker, Mohammed Abouelatta, Tarek I. Alanazi and Ahmed Saeed
Materials 2023, 16(6), 2511; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16062511 - 21 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1709
Abstract
Current mismatch due to solar cell failure or partial shading of solar panels may cause a reverse biasing of solar cells inside a photovoltaic (PV) module. The reverse-biased cells consume power instead of generating it, resulting in hot spots. To protect the solar [...] Read more.
Current mismatch due to solar cell failure or partial shading of solar panels may cause a reverse biasing of solar cells inside a photovoltaic (PV) module. The reverse-biased cells consume power instead of generating it, resulting in hot spots. To protect the solar cell against the reverse current, we introduce a novel design of a self-protected thin-film crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cell using TCAD simulation. The proposed device achieves two distinct functions where it acts as a regular solar cell at forward bias while it performs as a backward diode upon reverse biasing. The ON-state voltage (VON) of the backward equivalent diode is found to be 0.062 V, which is lower than the value for the Schottky diode usually used as a protective element in a string of solar cells. Furthermore, enhancement techniques to improve the electrical and optical characteristics of the self-protected device are investigated. The proposed solar cell is enhanced by optimizing different design parameters, such as the doping concentration and the layers’ thicknesses. The enhanced cell structure shows an improvement in the short-circuit current density (JSC) and the open-circuit voltage (VOC), and thus an increased power conversion efficiency (PCE) while the VON is increased due to an increase of the JSC. Moreover, the simulation results depict that, by the introduction of an antireflection coating (ARC) layer, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) is enhanced and the PCE is boosted to 22.43%. Although the inclusion of ARC results in increasing VON, it is still lower than the value of VON for the Schottky diode encountered in current protection technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Energy Materials and Structures for Solar Cell: Design and Application)
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9 pages, 1805 KiB  
Article
Impact of Graphene Monolayer on the Performance of Non-Conventional Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells with MoOx Hole-Selective Contact
by Eloi Ros, Susana Fernández, Pablo Ortega, Elena Taboada, Israel Arnedo, José Javier Gandía and Cristóbal Voz
Materials 2023, 16(3), 1223; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16031223 - 31 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2092
Abstract
In this work, a new design of transparent conductive electrode based on a graphene monolayer is evaluated. This hybrid electrode is incorporated into non-standard, high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells, where the conventional emitter is replaced by a MoOx selective contact. The device [...] Read more.
In this work, a new design of transparent conductive electrode based on a graphene monolayer is evaluated. This hybrid electrode is incorporated into non-standard, high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells, where the conventional emitter is replaced by a MoOx selective contact. The device characterization reveals a clear electrical improvement when the graphene monolayer is placed as part of the electrode. The current–voltage characteristic of the solar cell with graphene shows an improved FF and Voc provided by the front electrode modification. Improved conductance values up to 5.5 mS are achieved for the graphene-based electrode, in comparison with 3 mS for bare ITO. In addition, the device efficiency improves by around 1.6% when graphene is incorporated on top. These results so far open the possibility of noticeably improving the contact technology of non-conventional photovoltaic technologies and further enhancing their performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Energy Materials and Structures for Solar Cell: Design and Application)
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