Significant efficiency enhancement in thin film solar cells using laser beam-induced graphene transparent conductive electrodes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a numerical method to significantly improve the efficiency of thin film amorphous silicon solar cells by using laser beam-induced graphene as transparent electrodes with optimized fractal design, achieving a 24.5% photocurrent increase.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fractal design of laser beam-induced graphene electrodes to enhance light absorption and photocurrent in thin film solar cells, surpassing traditional ITO electrodes.

Findings

Photocurrent generation increased by 24.5% with optimized fractal design.

Laser beam-induced graphene effectively replaces ITO as transparent electrode.

Numerical simulations confirm the potential for efficiency enhancement.

Abstract

Thin film solar cells have been attractive for decades in advanced green technology platforms due to its possibilities to be integrated with buildings and on-chip applications. However, the bottleneck issues involved to consider the current solar cells as a major electricity source includes the lower efficiencies and cost-effectiveness. We numerically demonstrate the concept of the absorption enhancement in thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells using the laser beam-induced graphene material based on the insensitive polarization space-filling fractal design as transparent conductive electrodes. With the optimization of parameters such as thickness, width, and period of fractals, an enhancement of photocurrent generation of solar cells by a factor of 24.5% is achieved compared to reference solar cell with a traditional ITO.