Microstructured antireflective encapsulant on concentrator solar cells
Résumé
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.
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