Microstructured antireflective encapsulant on concentrator solar cells

Gavin P Forcade (1) , Arnaud Ritou (2, 3) , Philippe St‐pierre (2, 3) , Olivier Dellea (4) , Maïté Volatier (2, 3) , Abdelatif Jaouad (2, 3) , Christopher E Valdivia (1) , Karin Hinzer (1) , Maxime Darnon (2, 3)

1 uOttawa - Université d'Ottawa [Ontario]
2 3IT - Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Innovation Technologique [Sherbrooke]
3 LN2 - Laboratoire Nanotechnologies et Nanosystèmes [Sherbrooke]
4 CEA-TECH-Reg - CEA Tech en régions

Microstructured antireflective coatings (ARCs) can reduce reflection losses over a wide range of incidence angles when applied to the surface of a high-efficiency III-V photovoltaic cell in a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system. In this article, we present a microstructured ARC consisting of a monolayer of close-packed silica microbeads partially submerged within a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cell encapsulant for use within a reference 500Â CPV submodule. Comparing a commercialized SiO x encapsulant to this microstructured coating with 25% submerged 1,000 nm-diameter beads, angle-dependent external quantum efficiency measurements yield a 2.6% current gain for the microstructured coating. Simulations demonstrate good agreement with measurements, predicting a 2.4% current gain for the same configuration. Extrapolating with our validated model, we estimate a maximum and achievable (within a large manufacturing tolerance) current gain of 3.4% and 2.9 ± 0.4% using 60% submerged and 10%-32% submerged 760 nm-diameter beads, respectively.

Mots clés: antireflection; concentrator photovoltaic; encapsulant; external quantum efficiency; microstructuring; ray tracing; RCWA; TMM

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Gavin P Forcade, Arnaud Ritou, Philippe St‐pierre, Olivier Dellea, Maïté Volatier, et al.. Microstructured antireflective encapsulant on concentrator solar cells. Progress in Photovoltaics, 2021, ⟨10.1002/pip.3468⟩. ⟨hal-03346541⟩