Regular Article

Improving the efficiency of GaAs solar cells using a double semi-transparent carbon nanotubes thin layer

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, Rasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Lahijan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Langarud Branch, Islamic Azad University, Langarud, Iran

^* e-mail: ghadimi@liau.ac.ir

Received: 27 April 2019
Received in final form: 22 November 2019
Accepted: 26 November 2019
Published online: 5 February 2020

Abstract

To investigate the efficiency of a single-junction solar cell that was performed using a numerical analysis method, the effect of creating several different surface-enhancer layer structures on the efficiency of the solar cell was performed. In this study, several carbon nanotube structures adapted to the solar cell structure of the gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrate were used. These elements have two important features of transparency and conductivity. Here, the effect of various parameters such as structure type, dimensions, number of layers, usable impurities and their arrangement on the solar cell efficiency was investigated. In this research, the layer added on the surface of a solar cell can be modeled on a heterogeneous carbon nanotube network. Finally, an optimized single-junction solar cell was obtained by examining the performance of the solar cell using the final carbon nanotube layers. This work resulted, the solar cell with a combination of a double-layer carbon nanotube enhancer by about 30% of efficiency, due to the ability to absorb more photons in one layer of the nanotubes, and better electrical transferability in the other layer of the nanotubes. In this solar cell, two different layers of carbon nanotube with a surface ratio of 10% and 90% of the total surface enhancer layer were used, with a cellular efficiency of about 1% improvement in performance compared with the previous one.