Hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanotubes on InGaP/GaAs/Ge solar cells

Abstract

A new design where ZnO nanotubes were grown on the antireflection (AR) layer coated on triple-junction (T-J) solar cell devices to enhance the light conversion efficiency. Compared to the bare T-J solar cells (without an AR layer), the performance of Si3N4 AR coated solar cell showed improvement. The sample with a layer of ZnO nanotubes grown in top of AR layer showed the lowest light reflection compared with the bare and solely AR coated T-J solar cell especially in the spectrum range of 350-500 nm. The use of ZnO nanotubes have increased the conversion efficiency by 4.9% compared with the conventional T-J solar cell. While the Si3N4 AR coated sample only increased the conversion efficiency by 3.2%. This result is quite encouraging as further refinement and variation in the experiment procedures could possibly bring more exciting performance in the future.