Augmenting the performance of photovoltaic cell through surface coating of molybdenum disulphide

Abstract

The current investigation is focused on sol-gel grown molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) as an anti-reflection coating (ARC) material to increase performance of photovoltaic solar cells. Four layers (C-I, C-II, C-III & C- IV) at different thickness of MoS2 were deposited on polycrystalline solar substrate using spin coating technique. The effect of MoS2 coated on morphological structure, optical and electrical properties and thermal behaviour of solar cell are investigated. The C-III layer coated solar cells demonstrated minimum reflectance of 12 % in the UV visible region (300 - 800 nm). The maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.40 % (open environment source) and 19.23 % (closed controlled environment source) has been achieved at C-III layer coated solar cell. The C-III coated solar cell exhibited minimum cell temperature at 37.5 oC (open source) and 52.5 oC (closed source). The sol-gel developed MoS2 exhibits the desirable properties to be an ARC material for improving the PCE of solar cells.