Enhancing Solar Cell Efficiency with Coatings and Thin Films
A special issue of Coatings (ISSN 2079-6412). This special issue belongs to the section "Surface Engineering for Energy Harvesting, Conversion, and Storage".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 February 2027 | Viewed by 114
Editors
Interests: semiconductor; light emitting diode; solar cells
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In the renewable energy sector, solar cells are core devices for converting solar energy into electrical energy, and their efficiency directly determines the utilization rate of solar energy and the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic systems. However, current solar cells still face significant efficiency losses due to surface reflection, carrier recombination, poor environmental stability, and mismatched spectral absorption, limiting their large-scale commercial application and the realization of global carbon neutrality goals. Therefore, the improvement of the photon capture ability, carrier separation efficiency, and long-term stability of solar cells needs to be further promoted. Today, coatings and thin films are widely used in the efficiency enhancement and performance optimization of solar cells due to their advantages, such as their simple preparation process, low cost, strong designability, and compatibility with various solar cell types. This Special Issue focuses on “Enhancing Solar Cell Efficiency with Coatings and Thin Films”. The topics of interest for this Special Issue include (but are not restricted to) the following:
- Novel coating and thin-film material systems, e.g., titanium dioxide (TiO2), silicon dioxide (SiO2), zinc oxide (ZnO), magnesium fluoride (MgF2), nano-metallic materials, perovskite thin films, and gradient functional films;
- External field assisted preparation of solar cell coatings and thin films, e.g., plasma, ultrasonic, electromagnetic field, and laser-assisted deposition;
- Anti-reflection, anti-soiling, high light-transmittance, and corrosion-resistant coatings for solar cells, as well as metasurface-based anti-reflective structures;
- Functional thin films for efficiency enhancement, e.g., passivation films, transparent conductive oxide (TCO) thin films, plasmonic thin films, and carrier-selective contact thin films;
- Novel preparation methods of coatings and thin films for solar cells, e.g., atomic layer deposition (ALD), plasma deposition, extreme high-speed thin-film deposition, and printing-based thin-film fabrication;
- Simulation analysis of solar cell coatings and thin films, e.g., optical reflection/transmission simulation, temperature field, stress field, and carrier transport simulation;
- Monitoring and control of coating and thin-film preparation processes, including film thickness, roughness, crystallinity, and defect detection;
- Combination of image processing and artificial intelligence methods to optimize coating/thin-film performance and promote the industrialization of high-efficiency solar cell technology;
- Applications of coatings and thin films in various types of solar cells, e.g., crystalline silicon solar cells, thin-film solar cells (CdTe, CIGS), perovskite solar cells, and tandem solar cells;
- Any other aspects of coatings and thin films relevant for enhancing solar cell efficiency.
Dr. Xiansheng Tang
Dr. Chunhua Du
Guest Editors
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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-anonymized 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.
Keywords
- photovoltaic thin films
- perovskite solar cells
- interface engineering
- photoelectric coating
- carrier regulation
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