Application of Photonic Materials in PV and low cost approaches in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells by Dr. A. Antony

Location and Date: 
Wednesday,August 02, 2017, 4:00 pm, LT 101

Abstract:

-----------

Crystalline silicon solar cells have dominated the photovoltaic market from the very beginning and the cost of solar cells has exponentially decreased during the last decade. Improving the efficiency and lowering the cost are the two primary concerns of photovoltaic researchers.
A quick recap on the different approaches we have explored to increase the efficiency of solar cells will be presented. Dielectric broadband Bragg mirrors generally called as 1D photonic crystals have been developed for thin film and ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells for enhanced light trapping in the device. The photonic crystals have been used to fabricate SMART (Selectively Modulated Aesthetic Reflector Technology) coatings for Coloured Solar Cells for building integrated photovoltaics.
Apart from the activity on the conventional silicon heterojunction solar cells with thin intrinsic layer, which has demonstrated record efficiency of 26.7% efficiency recently by Kaneka, we have explored low cost methods for the heterojunction fabrication. Organic-Silicon hybrid heterojunction solar cells and, metal oxide based carrier selective contacted solar cells have been fabricated.
The talk summarises some of the highlights of achievements in the MNRE funded project AMANSI carried out at Department of Energy Science and Engineering in collaboration with NCPRE, IIT Bombay.
 
Bio-Sketch
Dr. Aldrin Antony is currently a National Solar Science fellow of MNRE, Govt. of India and is being hosted by the Department of Energy Sciences, IIT Bombay since 2012. Dr. Aldrin did his M.Sc. in Physics and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Cochin University of Science and Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at ENEA, the Renewable Energy Research Centre of Italy under ICS-UNIDO and UNESCO fellowship. He worked as a senior research scientist and the Team leader of “Grup’d Energia Solar” University of Barcelona from 2006 to 2012.  He was one of the founders of the start up company TestCel (2010-2012 Switzerland). He has been involved and coordinated many European and Spanish project consortiums in developing silicon thin film Silicon solar cells, modules, deposition tools, including the process development and fabrication of one of the world’s biggest a-Si:H flexible module on plastic substrate  by roll to roll process in 2008 with EPFL and FLEXCEL, and the single junction champion efficiency a-Si modules on 5.76m2 with T Solar Spain in 2011. His current research focuses on silicon heterojunction solar cells, photonic crystals, carrier selective contacts, etc.