Silver Nanowires: application in transparent conductive films (TCF) of solar cells

Abstract

Silver nanowires (AgNW) becoming promising alternatives to indium tin oxide (ITO) in order to fabricate the transparent conductive films (TCF) that is often present in electronic devices and is an inevitable part of all photovoltaic solar cells. Motivated by this fact, this work shows the results of carrying out the synthesis of AgNW, its deposition on Si wafers together with ITO and the corresponding lamination processes to form solar modules. Furthermore, in order to observe the differences provided by nanowires, both, the electrical and optical properties of the solar cells coated only with ITO and with a combination of ITO and AgNW are measured. This comparison includes measurement of different Si wafer thicknesses as well as modification of the lamination structure on wafers of the same thickness with the coating formed by the combination of ITO and AgNW. The results in this paper show a positive influence of AgNW, as it has led to clear improvements of both the electrical and optical properties of the studied solar cells. This is a step forward on the route of substituing ITO for AgNW networks though, it must be said, stability and reproducibility of AgNW are problems that remain to be solved.