Anti-reflective Coating for High-Efficiency Solar Cells

ABSTRACT: This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to develop a technology to enable broadband antireflective (AR) coatings for high-efficiency solar cells. Current, AR coatings use bilayers such as TiOx/Al2O3 that are sufficient enough to reduce reflectance losses. However, new materials and optical designs will be required to meet the need of future solar cells in which more of the solar spectrum will be utilized by the device. This requires broadband, omni-directional elimination of reflection especially for longer wavelengths. The proposed effort will develop materials that achieve this requirement while being robust enough to withstand encapsulation. The advantage of the proposed effort is that through material innovation and a new optical design, broadband AR coatings can be fabricated using conventional materials. The intellectual merit mainly lies in the technical challenges for realizing these materials and using them in an optical design. BENEFIT: The anticipated benefits of developing this technology include achieving record-level solar cell efficiency directly beneficial to satellite and space missions as well as contributing to our green energy initiative and our energy independence. Additionally, these coatings can be applied to numerous optical windows and sensors that require broadband AR coatings.