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Performance Improvement of Graphene/Silicon Solar Cells via Inverted Pyramid Texturation Array

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Abstract

Graphene/silicon (Gr/Si) solar cells have aroused extensive research interest due to their simple structure and great potential for low-cost photovoltaic applications. Enhancing light absorption is one of the mainstream methods to improve the performance of Gr/Si solar cell. In this paper, a large scale inverted pyramid array (IPa) was prepared by a simple and cost-effective one-step copper assisted chemical etching method, followed by the surface of the silicon inverted pyramid structure smoothed with a concentrated KOH treatment. Gr/SiIPa solar cells with and without KOH smoothing were both prepared as a comparison. The results show that KOH treated SiIPa has a better Schottky junction contact between graphene and the SiIPa surface, thus silicon surface defects and carrier recombination of devices were reduced. Compared with Gr/Si solar cells, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of Gr/SiIPa device is improved by 42% with KOH smoothing procedure. Finally, the PCE of HNO3 doping Gr/SiIPa devices reached 5.58%. This study provides guide value for improving the light trap capacity of Gr/Si solar cells and simple surface smoothing treatment for inverted pyramid texturing.

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The authors declare that the data and materials for this work are available.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support of this work from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51974143, 51904134, 61764009, 51762043); National Key R&D Program of China (No.2018YFC1901801, No.2018YFC1901805); Major Science and Technology Projects in Yunnan Province (No.2019ZE007, No. 202103AA080004, No. 202102AB080016); Key Project of Yunnan Province Natural Science Fund (No. 2018FA027); Yunnan Ten Thousand Talents Project (YNWR-QNBJ-2018-111) and the Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Ministry of Education of China (No. IRT_17R48).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering/Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Clean Utilization, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Cheng Li, Xiyao Zhang, Fengshuo Xi, Shaoyuan Li & Wenhui Ma

  2. School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Yichen Ma & Xiuhua Chen

  3. Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia

    Shaoyuan Li & Yuanchih Chang

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  1. Cheng Li
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  2. Yichen Ma
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  4. Xiuhua Chen
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Contributions

Cheng Li: Data curation, Writing—original draft. Yichen Ma: Conceptualization. Xiyao Zhang: Software. Xiuhua Chen: Funding acquisition, Visualization, Investigation. Fengshuo Xi: Supervision, Writing -review & editing. Shaoyuan Li: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing -review & editing. Wenhui Ma: Funding acquisition, Supervision. Yuanchih Chang: Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Fengshuo Xi or Shaoyuan Li.

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Highlights

• Uniform inverted pyramid arrays reducing the cell reflectance.

• The results show that KOH smoothed SiIPa has a better Schottky junction contact between graphene and the SiIPa surface.

• the silicon surface defects and carrier recombination of devices were reduced after KOH smoothed SiIPa.

• The PCE of Gr/SiIPa solar cells could reach up to 5.58%.

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Li, C., Ma, Y., Zhang, X. et al. Performance Improvement of Graphene/Silicon Solar Cells via Inverted Pyramid Texturation Array. Silicon 14, 10485–10493 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-022-01725-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-022-01725-4

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