Combining light-harvesting with detachability in high-efficiency thin-film silicon solar cells.

Efforts to realize thin-film solar cells on unconventional substrates face several obstacles in achieving good energy-conversion efficiency and integrating light-management into the solar cell design. In this report a technique to circumvent these obstacles is presented: transferability and an efficient light-harvesting scheme are combined for thin-film silicon solar cells by the incorporation of a NaCl layer. Amorphous silicon solar cells in p-i-n configuration are fabricated on reusable glass substrates coated with an interlayer of NaCl. Subsequently, the solar cells are detached from the substrate by dissolution of the sacrificial NaCl layer in water and then transferred onto a plastic sheet, with a resultant post-transfer efficiency of 9%. The light-trapping effect of the surface nanotextures originating from the NaCl layer on the overlying solar cell is studied theoretically and experimentally. The enhanced light absorption in the solar cells on NaCl-coated substrates leads to significant improvement in the photocurrent and energy-conversion efficiency in solar cells with both 350 and 100 nm thick absorber layers, compared to flat-substrate solar cells. Efficient transferable thin-film solar cells hold a vast potential for widespread deployment of off-grid photovoltaics and cost reduction.

High-resolution surface chemical analysis of a trifunctional pattern made by sequential colloidal shadowing.

We present a new method for creating surface chemical patterns where three chemistries can be periodically arranged at alternate positions on a single substrate without the use of top-down approaches. High-resolution chemical imaging by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), with nanometer spatial resolution, is used to prove the success of the patterning and subsequent chemical modification steps. We use a combination of colloidal self-assembly, plasma etching, self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and physical vapour deposition (PVD). The method utilizes a double colloid assembly process in which a first layer of close-packed colloids is created, followed by plasma etching, coating with gold and deposition of a first SAM layer. A second particle layer is deposited on top of the first layer masking the interstitial spaces containing the first SAM. A second gold layer is deposited followed by a second SAM. After particle removal the surface consists of the pattern containing two different SAMs and a SiO(2) layer that can be readily functionalized with silanes. The possibility in the replacement of the two different thiols is investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and it was found that no replacement is taking place. ToF-SIMS imaging is used to show the periodicity of the chemical patterns by tracking unique fragment ions from the different surface regions. The patterning method is adaptable to create smaller or larger chemical patterns by appropriate choice of particle sizes. The patterns are useful for immobilizing biomolecules for cell studies or as multiplexed biosensors.