Detalhes bibliográficos
| Resumo: | Photonic front-coatings with self-cleaning properties are presented as means to enhance the efficiency and outdoor performance of thin-film solar cells, via optical enhancement while simultaneously minimizing soiling-related losses. This is achieved by structuring parylene-C transparent encapsulants using a low-cost and highly-scalable colloidal-lithography methodology. As a result, superhydrophobic surfaces with broadband light-trapping properties are developed. The optimized parylene coatings show remarkably high water contact angles of up to 165.6° and extremely low adhesion, allowing effective surface self-cleaning. The controlled nano/micro-structuring of the surface features also generates strong anti-reflection and light scattering effects, corroborated by numeric electromagnetic modeling, which lead to pronounced photocurrent enhancement along the UV–vis–IR range. The impact of these photonic-structured encapsulants is demonstrated on nanocrystalline silicon solar cells, that show short-circuit current density gains of up to 23.6%, relative to planar reference cells. Furthermore, the improvement of the devices' angular response enables an enhancement of up to 35.2% in the average daily power generation. |
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| Autores principais: | Centeno, Pedro |
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| Outros Autores: | Alexandre, Miguel F.; Chapa, Manuel; Pinto, Joana V.; Deuermeier, Jonas; Mateus, Tiago; Fortunato, Elvira; Martins, Rodrigo; Águas, Hugo; Mendes, Manuel J. |
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| Assunto: | colloidal-lithography light management photovoltaics self-cleaning superhydrophobicity Mechanics of Materials Mechanical Engineering |
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| Ano: | 2020 |
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| País: | Portugal |
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| Tipo de documento: | artigo |
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| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
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| Instituição associada: | Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
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| Idioma: | inglês |
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| Origem: | Repositório Institucional da UNL |
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