Research Projects

In order to increase the proportion of sunlight absorption in solar cells as a means of enhancing the performance, all different types of solar cells consider light trapping in addition to anti reflection coating. Light trapping for significant increase in light absorption via enhanced optical path length and subsequent increase in short circuit current will be interest in thin film si solar cells, conventional semiconducting compound thin film solar cells, perovskite and dye sensitized solar cells. The original consideration of light trapping has happened in 1969 for improved photo detection sensitivity and was later adapted for solar cells. Many photovoltaic research groups that work on different types of solar cells consider device designs that incorporate texturing/plasmonic inclusions for light trapping to improve the device performance. In conventional bulk si solar cells and other types of solar cells light trapping strategies via surface texturing has found to enable increased light absorption, through texturing using etching process, patterning via lithography methods, via plasmonic absorption using nanoparticle incorporation. It is observed that utilization of light management methods in solar cells give rise to enhanced optical absorbance, however, a careful optimization takes into account of the parasitic absorption, which will affect the short circuit current, fill factor, etc .. Through this proposed work, light trapping management via Micro/Nano patterning methods will be evaluated on functional materials of conventional thin film solar cells.