Enhanced Erbium-Doped Ceria Nanostructure Coating to Improve Solar Cell Performance

Nader Shehata; Michael Clavel; Kathleen Meehan; Effat Samir; Soha Gaballah; Mohammed Salah

doi:10.3390/ma8115399

Enhanced Erbium-Doped Ceria Nanostructure Coating to Improve Solar Cell Performance

Materials (Basel). 2015 Nov 12;8(11):7663-7672. doi: 10.3390/ma8115399.

Authors

Nader Shehata^{1

2

3}, Michael Clavel⁴, Kathleen Meehan⁵, Effat Samir^{6

7}, Soha Gaballah^{8

9}, Mohammed Salah^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute State University, 302 Whittemore Hall, VA 24061, USA. nader83@vt.edu.
² Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. nader83@vt.edu.
³ Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP), Smart Critical Infrastructure (SmartCI) Research Center, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. nader83@vt.edu.
⁴ Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute State University, 302 Whittemore Hall, VA 24061, USA. mbclavel@vt.edu.
⁵ School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland G12 8QQ, UK. Kathleen.Meehan@glasgow.ac.uk.
⁶ Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP), Smart Critical Infrastructure (SmartCI) Research Center, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. effat_samir@mena.vt.edu.
⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. effat_samir@mena.vt.edu.
⁸ Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP), Smart Critical Infrastructure (SmartCI) Research Center, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. eng.soha.gaballah@gmail.com.
⁹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. eng.soha.gaballah@gmail.com.
¹⁰ Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. m.salah@mena.vt.edu.
¹¹ Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP), Smart Critical Infrastructure (SmartCI) Research Center, Alexandria University, Elhadara, Alexandria 21544, Egypt. m.salah@mena.vt.edu.

Abstract

This paper discusses the effect of adding reduced erbium-doped ceria nanoparticles (REDC NPs) as a coating on silicon solar cells. Reduced ceria nanoparticles doped with erbium have the advantages of both improving conductivity and optical conversion of solar cells. Oxygen vacancies in ceria nanoparticles reduce Ce⁴⁺ to Ce³⁺ which follow the rule of improving conductivity of solar cells through the hopping mechanism. The existence of Ce³⁺ helps in the down-conversion from 430 nm excitation to 530 nm emission. The erbium dopant forms energy levels inside the low-phonon ceria host to up-convert the 780 nm excitations into green and red emissions. When coating reduced erbium-doped ceria nanoparticles on the back side of a solar cell, a promising improvement in the solar cell efficiency has been observed from 15% to 16.5% due to the mutual impact of improved electric conductivity and multi-optical conversions. Finally, the impact of the added coater on the electric field distribution inside the solar cell has been studied.

Keywords: ceria nanoparticles; conductivity; erbium dopant; solar cells; up-conversion.