Enhanced angular characteristics of indium tin oxide nanowhisker-coated silicon solar cells

Omnidirectional and broadband light harvesting is critical to photovoltaics due to the sun's movement and its wide spectral range of radiation. In this work, we demonstrate distinctive indium-tin-oxide nanowhiskers that achieve superior angular and spectral characteristics for crystalline silicon solar cells using angle-resolved reflectance spectroscopy. The solar-spectrum weighted reflectance is well below 6% for incident angles of up to 70 and for the wavelength range between 400nm and 1000nm. As a result, the nanowhisker coated solar cell exhibits broadband quantum efficiency characteristics and enhanced short-circuit currents for large angles of incidence. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America