A photovoltaic window with sun-tracking shading elements towards maximum power generation and non-glare daylighting

Vertical space bears great potential of solar energy especially for congested urban areas, where photovoltaic (PV) windows in high-rise buildings can contribute to both power generation and daylight harvest. Previous studies on sun-tracking PV windows strayed into the trade-off between tracking performance and mutual shading, failing to achieve...

Quadruple-Junction Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells Using Four Different Absorber Materials

We fabricated and studied quadruple-junction wide-gap a-Si:H/narrow-gap a-Si:H/a-SiGex:H/nc-Si:H thin-film silicon solar cells. It is among the first attempts in thin-film photovoltaics to make a two-terminal solar cell with four different absorber materials. Several tunnel recombination junctions were tested, and the n-SiOx:H/p-SiOx:H structure...

Materials and Light Management for High-Efficiency Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Direct conversion of sunlight into electricity is one of the most promising approaches to provide sufficient renewable energy for humankind. Solar cells are such devices which can efficiently generate electricity from sunlight through the photovoltaic effect. Thin-film silicon solar cells, a type of photovoltaic (PV) devices which deploy the...

In-situ impedances measurement and influence of 2 k - 150 kHz disturbances on measurement of electrical parameters

With the growth of the number of electric appliances which suffer from electromagnetic inference (EMI) in the frequency range 2 k – 150 kHz, the setting up of researches in this field has become more and more popular. Measuring impedances accurately in this frequency range is of great assistance for better understanding of the circuit as well as...

Quadruple-junction thin-film silicon-based solar cells with high open-circuit voltage

Micro-textures for efficient light trapping and improved electrical performance in thin-film nanocrystalline silicon solar cells

Improved light trapping in microcrystalline silicon solar cells by plasmonic back reflector with broad angular scattering and low parasitic absorption

We show experimentally that the photocurrent of thin-film hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (?c-Si:H) solar cells can be enhanced by 4.5?mA/cm2 with a plasmonic back reflector (BR). The light trapping performance is improved using plasmonic BR with broader angular scattering and lower parasitic absorption loss through tuning the size of...