A Colloquium on Evaluation of Light-trapping Performance in Silicon Thin-film Solar Cells was conducted at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri campus, on February 27, 2018. Dr. Sanjay Ram was the resource person.

Venue: N003 (Ground Floor, Main building)

Abstract:

Impressive strides in the field of nanophotonics have introduced novel ways to increase the utilization of the solar spectrum by light-trapping in solar cells, aimed at achieving increased device efficiency. Similarly, progress in nanofabrication has enabled many low-cost bottom-up techniques for the fabrication of substrates for nanophotonic solar cells. In my work on high-efficiency thin-film silicon solar cells, one approach to light-trapping has involved the use of shape memory polymers to fabricate tunable quasi-periodic uniaxial nano wrinkle textured substrates. However, the evaluation of the potential of a light scattering scheme comprising of quasi-periodic or random nanofeatures and self-assembled nanopatterns is difficult using theoretical methods. The talk will briefly outline the simple and inexpensive fabrication method used in this study to achieve large scale, scalable nanophotonic features, and discuss the challenges in the assessment of such light-trapping techniques. As a practical solution to this problem, an approach will be presented which integrates the evaluation of the topological characteristics and the light-trapping using the basic characterization tools of atomic force microscopy and Raman scattering, respectively, and the correlation of these to the electrical performance. The effectiveness of this novel and simple technique to assess light-trapping will be described to highlight the method as a useful route for predicting the light-harvesting potential of nanopatterned solar cells.

About the Speaker

Dr. Sanjay Ram obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from I.I.T. Kanpur in 2006. Subsequently, Dr. Ram did postdoctoral fellowships from Ecole Polytechnique, France and New University of Lisbon, Portugal. He worked as an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Denmark before moving to Amrita University. His research interests are 3rd generation photovoltaics, large-area electronics, sustainable energy, nanomaterials and more recently, sensors and hybrid energy technologies.