Antimony Doped Tin Oxide Infrared Shielding Films for Cooling Silicon Solar Cells

The operating temperature of silicon solar cells is strongly impacting on their photoelectrical conversion efficiency (PCE). The increasing temperature of the silicon solar cells can degrade device performance significantly. It is well known that antimony-doped tin oxide (ATO) shows the very high transmittivity in visible light region and heat-insulating properties. In this work, ATO nanoparticles with a crystallite size of 8 nm via a peroxo-route and hydrothermal process were prepared. Then the films were deposited by spin-coating method, furtherly studying the effect of varying Sb dopant concentration and film thickness on solar-heat shielding performance and device performance. To evaluate the IR-shielding and silicon solar cells properties, the ATO films on glass were used as the cover glass on the top of silicon solar cells under solar simulator. The experimental results showed that in presence of ATO films, PCE was effectively kept, which has proved that the properties of the ATO films could affect the cell performance after being irradiated for 30 min. Among them, 6-layer ATO film with 7 mol% doped concentration was the champion for silicon solar cells to keep its efficiency. After being irradiated for 30 min, the efficiency of solar cell was maintained 97.21% as the initial, which was much higher than that of in presence of bare glass.