Improvement of power conversion efficiency of silicon solar cell coated with metallic-polymer nanocomposites

Tay, Bing Yuan (2022) Improvement of power conversion efficiency of silicon solar cell coated with metallic-polymer nanocomposites. Master dissertation/thesis, UTAR.

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Abstract

Silicon solar cell is an excellent candidate for the mass implementation of the photovoltaic device to harness solar energy. However, they are usually protected with a piece of silicon glass panel on their surface, which results in a reduction in light tra nsmission. In addition, the high refractive index of silicon causes surface light reflection. Therefore, an efficient light harvesting scheme must be implemented to suppress the optical losses. In this study, a novel approach by depositing an antireflecti ve coating on the glass surface of solar modules was demonstrated. The poly(methyl methacrylate trimethoxyvinylsilane), P(MMAcoAAco-- coacrylic acidcoTMVS) nanospheres with an average particle size of 97 nm were prepared through an emulsion polymerizat ion process. Coating a functional array of polyacrylic nanospheres with 7 wt% of TMVS via the immersion selfassembly coating method resulted in the highest relative power conversion efficiency (PCE) enhancement of about 42%. Such an antireflective array of polyacrylic nanospheres was able to endure prolonged natural weathering exposure and remained reasonably high in relative PCE enhancement of 11.914.0% up to 130 days of outdoor exposure. The relative PCE improvement of solar modules was elevated signif--icantly to 73.2% by depositing an array of P(MMA co AAco TMVS) nanospheres containing 7 wt% of TMVS and 12.5 ppm of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) with 1030 nm in size. The encapsulated AgNPs were synthesized through a chemical reduction process with dodec the capping agent at 0 o ylamine (S value of 2.78) as C. By introducing an additional protective layer of silane coating with hydrophobic nature, the solar modules overlaid with an array of polyacrylate nanocomposites were shielded from degradation and beca me more resistant to natural weathering processes. After 188 days of outdoor exposure, the highest relative PCE enhancement of 24.0% was retained for the precoated solar modules treated with 1.0 v/v% of nonafluorohexyltrimethoxysilane compared to the init enhancement of 68.1% before outdoor exposure. ial relative PCE

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