Horizontal deposition of polystyrene colloids for enhanced light trapping in solar cells

Abstract

Motivations: A majority of solar cells base their materials off of silicon wafers about 180-300 microns in thickness due to it being very cost efficient in the market. However, when the thickness of silicon wafers are reduced, they are only able to create energy on the visible light spectrum for solar rays. Because light on the infrared spectrum is not effectively absorbed when making thinner silicon wafers, a proposal to implement metal particles into the wafer to scatter light has been suggested. Light enters the solar cell but is scattered because of metal particles uniformly placed on top of the wafers. Light is then trapped between the semiconductor due to high angles the light is scattered at. This results in a more effective absorption of solar energy. The goal of this work is to fabricate polystyrene particles on a substrate with a uniform monolayer. And then find an effective chemical to mix with the particles to evenly separate the particles so they are not touching each other.