Abstract
Solar photo voltaic cell (PVC) has shown colossal potential in reducing the cost of electricity and is considered to be one of the cleanest green forms of renewable energy. The current standard material for transparent electrodes in solar PVC is indium tin oxide (ITO). Owing to the high cost of ITO, scarcity and chemical instability of indium, graphene has been proposed as a potential alternative by scientists. This paper, suggest that replacing ITO with mono-layer graphene in amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar PVC yields comparable performance. This paper further explores standard multiple junctions tandem a-Si:H/µc-Si:H micromorph solar PVC (msPVC) for better efficiency and proposes the use of graphene (G)–zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocomposite electrode based msPVC (G-ZnOmsPVC) for better absorption. The modelling and characterisation is done on SILVACO-Atlas virtual fabrication tool. The results reveal that the G-ZnOmsPVC manifests higher power conversion efficiency and absorption spectrum than that of traditional msPVC.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Damiano A, Gatto G, Marongiu I, Porru M, Serpi A (2014) Real-time control strategy of energy storage systems for renewable energy sources exploitation. IEEE Trans Sustain Energy 5(2):567–576
Bagher AM, Vahid MMA, Mohsen M (2015) Types of Solar Cells and Applications. Am J Opt Photonics 3:94–113
Wurfel Uli, Cuevas Andres, Wurfel Peter (2015) Charge carrier separation in solar cells. IEEE J Photovolt 5:461–469
Bondja CN, Geng Z, Granzner R, Pezoldt J, Schwierz F (2016) Simulation of 50-nm gate graphene nanoribbon transistors. Electronics. doi:10.3390/electronics5010003
Vaianella F, Rosolen G, Maes B (2015) Graphene as a transparent electrode for amorphous silicon-based solar cells. J Appl Phys 117(24):243102
Ke Q, Wang J (2016) Graphene based materials for supercapacitor electrodes—a review. J Materiomics 2(1):37–54
Smith DD, Cousins P, Westerberg S, De Jesus-Tabajonda R, Aniero G, Shen Y-C (2014) Toward the practical limits of silicon solar cells. In: Proc. 40th IEEE photovoltaic spec. conf. pp 1465–1469
Mohammed Ikbal Kabir, Seyed A. Shahahmadi, Victor Lim, Saleem Zaidi, Kamaruzzaman Sopian, and Nowshad Amin (2012) Amorphous Silicon Single-Junction Thin-Film Solar Cell Exceeding 10% Efficiency by Design Optimization, International Journal of Photoenergy, vol. 2012. doi:10.1155/2012/460919
You J, Dou L et al (2013) Recent trends in polymer tandem solar cell research. J Prog Polym Sci 38(12):1909–1928
Chowdhary TH, Islam A et al (2016) Prospects of graphene as a potential carrier-transport model in third generation solar cells, vol 16. The Chemical Society of Japan and Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, pp 614–632
Youngseok L, Vinh AD, Iftiquar SM, Sangho K, Junsin Y (2016) Current transport studies of amorphous n–p junctions and its application in a-Si:H/HITtype tandem cells. J Prog Photovolt 24:52–58
Saranya M, Ramachandran R, Wang F (2016) Graphene–zinc oxide (G-ZnO) nanocomposite for electrochemical supercapacitor application. Adv Mater Devices 1(4):454–460
Kabir MI, Ibrahim Z, Sopian K (2010) Effect of structural variations in amorphous silicon based single and multi-junction solar cells from numerical analysis. J Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 94(9):1542–1545
Kuang Y, Liu Y, Ma Y et al (2015) Modeling and Design of Graphene GaAs Junction Solar Cell. Adv Conden Matt Phys 2015. doi:10.1155/2015/326384
Lu MN, Chang CY, Wei TC, Lin JY (2016) Recent development of graphene-based cathode materials for dye-sensitized solar cells. J Nanomaterials 2016. doi:10.1155/2016/4742724
Castens L, Bailat J, Benagli S et al (2009) Advanced light management in micromorph solar cells. In: Inorganic nanostructured photovoltaics symposium B. pp 35–39
Meillaud F, Battaglia C et al (2011) Latest developments of high efficiency micromorph tandem silicon solar cells implementing innovative substrate materials and improved cell design. In: IEEE photovoltaic specialist conference (PVSC). doi:10.1109/PVSC.2011.6185923
Singh E, Nalwa HS (2015) Graphene based bulk heterojunction solar cells: a review. J Nanosci Nanotechnol 9:6237–6278
Taguchi M, Yano A, Tohoda S, Matsuyama K, Nakamura Y, Nishiwaki T, Fujita K, Maruyama E (2014) 24.7% record efficiency HIT solar cell on thin silicon wafer. IEEE J Photovolt 4:96–99
Singh S, Singh A, Kaur N (2016) Efficiency investigations of organic/inorganic hybrid ZnO nanoparticles based dye-sensitized solar cells. J Mater 2016. doi:10.1155/2016/9081346
Fujimoto Y (2015) Formation, energetics, and electronic properties of graphene monolayer and bilayer doped with heteroatoms. Adv Condens Matter Phys 2015. doi:10.1155/2015/571490 (Article ID 571490)
Atlas User Manual Guide (2012)
Zeman M, Krc J (2008) Optical and electrical modelling of thin film solar cells. J Mater Res 23(4):889–898
Pathak MJM, Girotra K, Harrison SJ, Pearce JM (2012) The effect of hybrid photovoltaic thermal device operating conditions on intrinsic layer thickness optimization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells. Solar Energy 86:2673–2677
Peplow M (2013) Graphene: the quest for supercarbon. Nature 503(7476):327–329
Kaplan D, Swaminathan V, Recine G, Balu R, Karna S (2013) Bandgap tuning of mono-and bilayer graphene doped with group IV elements. J Appl Phys 113(18):183701
Faryad M, Lakhtakia A (2013) Enhancement of light absorption efficiency of amorphous silicon thin-film tandem solar cell due to multiple surface-plasmon-polariton waves in the near-infrared spectral regime. Opt Eng 52(8):087106
Bai L, Liu B et al (2015) Effect of I/N interface on the performance of superstrate hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon solar cells. J Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 140:204–208
Meillaud F, Billet A et al (2012) Latest developments of high-efficiency micromorph tandem silicon solar cells implementing innovative substrate materials and improved cell design. IEEE J Photovolt 2(3):236–240
Fang J, Bai L et al (2016) High-efficiency micromorph solar cell with light management in tunnel recombination junction. J Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 155:469–473
Tavakoli MM, Tavakoli R, Hasanzadeh S, Mirfasih MH (2016) Interface engineering of perovskite solar cell using a reduced-graphene scaffold. J Phys Chem C 120(35):19531–19536
Avrutin V et al. (2014) Amorphous and micromorph Si solar cells: current status and outlook. Turk J Phys 38:526–542. doi:10.3906/fiz-1406-14
Jeng-Yu L et al. (2015) Molybdenum disulfide/reduced graphene oxide–carbon nanotube hybrids as efficient catalytic materials in dye-sensitized solar cells. J Chem Electro Chem. doi:10.1002/celc.201402423
Hafezi R et al. (2015) Material and solar cell research in high efficiency micromorph tandem solar cell. J of Ciência eNatura 37(2):434–440
Chander S, Purohit A, Nehra A, Nehra SP, Dhaka MS (2015) A study on spectral response and external quantum efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. Int J Renew Ener Res 5(1):41–44
Ray SK et al. (2015) Design and modelling of GAAS/ INGAP/ INGAAS/ GE III–V triple junction solar cell. Inter J Elect Electron Eng 7(1):146–151
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chawla, R., Singhal, P. & Garg, A.K. Design and modelling of G–ZnO nanocomposite electrode for a-Si:H/µc-Si:H micromorph solar cell. Int. j. inf. tecnol. 10, 265–277 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41870-017-0043-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41870-017-0043-6