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Coatings
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Coatings for Solar Cell Applications
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Coatings for Solar Cell Applications

A special issue of Coatings (ISSN 2079-6412).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2020) | Viewed by 15049

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Yasuaki Ishikawa

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan
Interests: solar cell; semiconductor engineering; chemical vapor deposition; thin film; power device; thermoelectric material; reliability; nano-fabrication

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit your work to this Special Issue of Coatings on “Coating for Solar Cell Application”. Solar cells and their modules need many coating layers to increase their performances as well as show their creativity. In particular, state-of-the-art solar cells, such as the Si-hetero-junction type and passivated contact type, require the formation of a high-quality passivation layer with an appropriate coating technique to suppress the surface recombination velocity. In addition, the coloring of the photovoltaic module enhances its design, increasing the interest in building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), although the deterioration of the cell efficiency should be suppressed as much as possible. An anti-reflection-coating is coated on the solar cells as well as the front glass of the photovoltaic modules to enhance the cell performance. The photovoltaic module also has an anti-soiling coating to suppress the power generation loss owing to soiling during exposure at the installed site. UV light, however, deteriorates the coating quality and sometimes eliminates the effect of the coating.

In particular, the topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to

  • Novel passivation including hole and electron selective contact;
  • Coloring technology of solar cells;
  • Robust anti-reflection-coating and its coating technology;
  • Robust anti-soiling-coating and its coating technology.

Prof. Dr. Yasuaki Ishikawa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Coatings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 3460 KiB  
Article
Experimental Investigation to Improve the Energy Efficiency of Solar PV Panels Using Hydrophobic SiO2 Nanomaterial
by Hatem R. Alamri, Hegazy Rezk, Heba Abd-Elbary, Hamdy A. Ziedan and Ahmed Elnozahy
Coatings 2020, 10(5), 503; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10050503 - 24 May 2020
Cited by 36 | Viewed by 7501
Abstract
This research aims to experimentally improve the overall efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels by coating them with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial. Also, an accurate mathematical model was used to estimate the parameters of the PV panel, which is a non-linear optimization problem. [...] Read more.
This research aims to experimentally improve the overall efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels by coating them with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial. Also, an accurate mathematical model was used to estimate the parameters of the PV panel, which is a non-linear optimization problem. Based on the experimental data and using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the optimal five parameters of a single diode model of a PV panel were determined in this study. This experimental work was conducted and carried out in the Renewable Energy Laboratory of Assiut University, Egypt. A comparative analysis was completed for three identical solar PV panels; the first panel was coated with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial, so it was considered to be a self-cleaning panel; the second panel was uncoated and cleaned manually on a daily basis; and the third panel was kept dusty all the time through the experimental investigation, and was used as a reference. Experimentally, the output power of the PV panels was monitored for each panel in this study. Also, the anti-static and anti-reflection effects of coating solar PV panels with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial were investigated experimentally. According to the obtained experimental results, it was found that the use of SiO2 coating for PV panels results in the better performance of the PV panels. The overall efficiency of the coated panel increased by 15% and 5%, compared to the dusty panel and the uncoated panel which was manually cleaned daily, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coatings for Solar Cell Applications)
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8 pages, 1000 KiB  
Communication
Water-Processed Organic Solar Cells with Open-Circuit Voltages Exceeding 1.3V
by Varun Vohra, Shunsuke Shimizu and Yuko Takeoka
Coatings 2020, 10(4), 421; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10040421 - 24 Apr 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2960
Abstract
Conjugated polyelectrolytes are commonly employed as interlayers to modify organic solar cell (OSC) electrode work functions but their use as an electron donor in water-processed OSC active layers has barely been investigated. Here, we demonstrate that poly[3-(6’-N,N,N-trimethyl ammonium)-hexylthiophene] bromide (P3HTN) can [...] Read more.
Conjugated polyelectrolytes are commonly employed as interlayers to modify organic solar cell (OSC) electrode work functions but their use as an electron donor in water-processed OSC active layers has barely been investigated. Here, we demonstrate that poly[3-(6’-N,N,N-trimethyl ammonium)-hexylthiophene] bromide (P3HTN) can be employed as an electron donor combined with a water-soluble fullerene (PEG-C60) into eco-friendly active layers deposited from aqueous solutions. Spin-coating a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) layer prior to the P3HTN:PEG-C60 active layer deposition considerably increases the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the OSCs to values above 1.3 V. Along with this enhanced Voc, the OSCs fabricated with the PEDOT:PSS interlayers exhibit 10-fold and 5-fold increases in short-circuit current density (Jsc) with respect to those employing bare indium tin oxide (ITO) and molybdenum trioxide coated ITO anodes, respectively. These findings suggest that the enhanced Jsc and Voc in the water-processed OSCs using the PEDOT:PSS interlayer cannot be solely ascribed to a better hole collection but rather to ion exchanges taking place between PEDOT:PSS and P3HTN. We investigate the optoelectronic properties of the newly formed polyelectrolytes using absorption and photoelectron spectroscopy combined with hole transport measurements to elucidate the enhanced photovoltaic parameters obtained in the OSCs prepared with PEDOT:PSS and P3HTN. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coatings for Solar Cell Applications)
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18 pages, 5457 KiB  
Article
Trap State and Charge Recombination in Nanocrystalline Passivized Conductive and Photoelectrode Interface of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell
by Siti Nur Azella Zaine, Norani Muti Mohamed, Mehboob Khatani, Adel Eskandar Samsudin and Muhammad Umair Shahid
Coatings 2020, 10(3), 284; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10030284 - 19 Mar 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3520
Abstract
The dynamic competition between electron generation and recombination was found to be a bottleneck restricting the development of high-performance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Introducing a passivation layer on the surface of the TiO2 photoelectrode material plays a crucial role in separating the [...] Read more.
The dynamic competition between electron generation and recombination was found to be a bottleneck restricting the development of high-performance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Introducing a passivation layer on the surface of the TiO2 photoelectrode material plays a crucial role in separating the charge by preventing the recombination of photogenerated electrons with the oxidized species. This study aims to understand in detail the kinetics of the electron recombination process of a DSSC fabricated with a conductive substrate and photoelectrode film, both passivized with a layer of nanocrystalline TiO2. Interestingly, the coating, which acted as a passivation layer, suppressed the back-electron transfer and improved the overall performance of the integrated DSSC. The passivation layer reduced the exposed site of the fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO)–electrolyte interface, thereby reducing the dark current phenomenon. In addition, the presence of the passivation layer reduced the rate of electron recombination related to the surface state recombination, as well as the trapping/de-trapping phenomenon. The photovoltaic properties of the nanocrystalline-coated DSSC, such as short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, and fill factor, showed significant improvement compared to the un-coated photoelectrode film. The overall performance efficiency improved by about 22% compared to the un-coated photoelectrode-based DSSC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coatings for Solar Cell Applications)
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