Optik 122 (2011) 14621465

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Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo

The effect of anti-reection coating of porous silicon on solar cells efciency

Wisam J. Aziz , Asmiet Ramizy, K. Ibrahim, Z. Hassan, Khalid Omar
Nano-Optoelectronics Research and Technology Laboratory, School of Physics, University Sains Malaysia, 11800 USM, Penang, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 2 February 2010
Accepted 6 August 2010

Keywords:
Anti-reection coating
Porous silicon
Solar cells
High efciency

a b s t r a c t
Anti-reection coatings of solar cells have been fabricated using different techniques. The techniques
used include SiO2 thermal oxidation, ZnO/TiO2 sputtering deposition and porous silicon prepared by
electrochemical etching. Surface morphology and structural properties of solar cells were investigated
by using scanning electron microscopy and atomic forces microscopy. Optical reectance was obtained
by using optical reectometer. IV characterizations were studied under 80 mW/cm2 illumination conditions. Porous silicon was found to be an excellent anti-reection coating against incident light when it is
compared with another anti-reection coating and exhibited good light-trapping of a wide wavelength
spectrum which produced high efciency solar cells.
2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The reduction of reectivity is a very important parameter in
obtaining high efciency solar cells. To achieve this goal, the top
surface of the solar cells is usually covered with different antireection coating methods. These methods can be divided into three
techniques: thermal oxidation, sputtering deposition and electrochemical etching.
The reduction of optical reection at layers interface is a fundamental challenge in most important applications of optics. The
optical reection at a specic wavelength can be reduced using
a single layer coating with quarter-wavelength optical thickness

and refractive index n = n1 n2 , where n1 and n2 are the refractive

indices of the ambient and substrate, respectively [1].
The refractive index can vary when the deposition angle changes
that depends on porosity of the surface. Porosity becomes larger
and the refractive index decreases to lower values at 90 deposition
angle. The nanostructure material is termed as low-refractiveindex (low-n) material [24].
Properties of porous silicon (PS) that make it very attractive for
solar cell applications include band gap broadening, wide absorption spectrum, wide optical transmission range (7001000 nm),
and good antireection (AR) coating for solar cells [5]. In addition,
it can be used for surface passivation and texturisation [610]. The
potential advantages of PS to be used as an ARC for solar cells are
due to the following processes: (a) PS process can simultaneously
obtain antireection coating, surface passivation and removing of

Corresponding author. Tel.: +0060174132354; fax: +60 4 6579150.

E-mail addresses: wisam jafer@yahoo.com,
asmat hadithi@yahoo.com (W.J. Aziz).
0030-4026/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijleo.2010.08.025

dead layer in the diffused region; (b) PS is used to convert higher

energy solar radiation into longer wavelength light which can be
absorbed more efciently into bulk silicon [5]; (c) the PS surface
layer increases in the surface area of solar cell; (d) PS is used as an
ARC due to its signicant refractive index which depends on the
porosity.
The objective of this work is to attempt to increase the efciency
of silicon solar cells using various antireection coating techniques.
2. Experimental procedure
P-type Si wafer (1 1 1) orientation, resistivity of 0.75  cm, thickness of 283 m are used as a substrate. Thermal oxidation at 1100 C
and 45 min exposure time in oxygen environment was applied to
obtain SiO2 on silicon wafer.
RF sputtering has been used to fabricate TiO2 layer and followed
by ZnO layer deposition by DC sputtering to format (ZnO/TiO2 ) solar
cells coating.
The silicon wafer was placed in electrolyte solution (HF:ethanol,
1:3) with current density of 60 mA/cm2 and 30 min as etching time
to produce the porous silicon. Before etching process, Si substrate
was cleaned to remove the oxide layer by the RCA method. Then, Si
wafer was immersed in HF acid to remove the native oxide. After
that, the Teon electrochemical cell was made and has a circular
aperture on its bottom, which is sealed with silicon wafer. The cell
has a two-electrode system connected with the silicon wafer as
anode and platinum as cathode as shown in Fig. 1. The synthesis
was carried out at room temperature, after etching all samples were
rinsed in ethanol and dried in air process.
Surface morphology and structural properties of PS were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic
forces microscopy (AFM).

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1463

Fig. 1. The electrochemical etching set-up.

Fig. 4. SEM image of ZnO/TiO2 surface coating.

Fig. 2. Solar cells based on porous-silicon.

Fig. 2 shows the schematic diagram of a solar cell based on PS.

Si wafer was doped with phosphorus to be n-type. The aluminum
has been evaporating for back metal contact and for front metallization the silver was used. Aluminum and silver were annealing
under 400 C for 20 min. The fabricated device was examined using
currentvoltage (IV) measurement. Optical reectance was characterized using optical reectometer (Filmetrics F20).
3. Result and discussion
SEM measurements revealed the surface morphology and nanostructure of the surface coatings. The SiO2 coating topography
illustrate the effect of the single layer (SL) on surface coating to
be isotropic layer as shown in Fig. 3. The double layer antireection (DLAR) coatings exhibited non-homogeneity as shown in Fig. 4.
Whilst, Fig. 5 shows the porosity and pore size and size distribution in different locations, the average of the pores size is about

Fig. 3. SEM image of SiO2 surface coating.

8 nm. This means that the pore diameter and nanostructure size are
dependent on anodization conditions such as HF:ethanol concentration, etching time, temperature, and current density [11]. More
homogeneous and uniform distributions of pores have been shown
clearly in our sample when it is compared with other samples,
prepared in different electrolyte composition [12].
Fig. 6 shows the statistical distribution of SiO2 roughness height.
This histogram distribution is a key parameter to give the information about surface uniformity and the coating formation.
The single layer antireection (SLAR) coating of SiO2 reveal more
smooth surface (3.17 nm roughness) compared with double layer
antireection (DLAR) coatings of ZnO/TiO2 (7.8 nm roughness) and
PS surface coating (1025 nm roughness) as shown in Figs. 7 and 8
respectively. The high roughness PS layer implies the possibility to
enhance the solar cell photoconversion that forms light trapping
centers which lead to high intensity of luminescent as shown in
Fig. 9.
Fig. 10 shows the various reectance spectra of SiO2 , ZnO/TiO2
and PS coating. It was found the PS surface texturing clearly reduce
light reection and increased the light-trapping upon wide wavelength range compared with the surfaces reections affected by
SLAR coating and DLAR coatings due to the reconstructed porous
silicon which lead to reduce the reection.
The open-circuit voltage Voc , short-circuit current Isc , maximum
voltage Vm , and the maximum current Im , are the prominent parameters to calculate the solar cell efciency. The efciency of the cell
at the maximum power point can be calculated as follows:
=

Pm
Im Vm
=
Pin
Pin

(1)

Fig. 5. SEM image of porous silicon.

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W.J. Aziz et al. / Optik 122 (2011) 14621465

Table 1
Calculations of ll factor (FF) and efciency to SiO2 coating, ZnO/TiO2 coating and PS coating.
Samples

Vm (V)

Im (mA)

Voc (V)

Isc (mA)

FF

Efciency, 

PS coating
ZnO/TiO2 coating
SiO2 coating

0.36
0.292
0.26

12.39
6.03
5.09

0.44
0.37
0.34

12.4
6.04
5.1

0.82
0.79
0.77

11.23%
4.41%
3.34%

Fig. 7. AFM images of double layer ZnO/TiO2 .

Fig. 6. AFM images of single layer SiO2 .

porous surface texturing properties can enhance and increase the

conversion efciency of silicon solar cells.

The ll factor (FF) is

FF =

Im Vm
Isc Voc

(2)
4. Conclusion

where Pm is an output power and Pin is an incident power.

Fig. 11 shows the increase of efciency on PS cell compared with
SLAR and DLAR coating. This is attributed to an increase in the open
circuit voltage without signicant loss in the short circuit current
of solar cells. As shown in Table 1, it can be concluded that the

A porous surface layer might act as an antireection coating

compared with another ARC such as the solar cells efciencies are
3.34% at single layer coating SiO2 , 4.41% at double layers coating
TiO2 /ZnO and 11.23% at porous silicon coating. These attribute to

Fig. 8. AFM images of PS.

W.J. Aziz et al. / Optik 122 (2011) 14621465

1465

14
12

Current (mA)

10
8
6
4
2
0

SiO 2 coating
ZnO/TiO 2 coating
PS coating
0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Voltage (V)

Fig. 9. PL spectra of porous silicon prepared by electrochemical etching.

0.5
ZnO/TiO 2 coating

Fig. 11. Currentvoltage (IV) characteristics of (a) SiO2 coating, (b) ZnO/TiO2 coating and (c) PS coating.

cal etching which demonstrate a suitable technique for solar cell

manufacturing.

SiO 2 coating
PS coating

Reflection

0.4

References

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0
300

400

500

600

700

800

Wavelength (nm)

900

1000

1100

Fig. 10. The reectance spectra of SiO2 coating, ZnO/TiO2 coating and PS coating.

reduction in optical losses and decrease the recombination losses

on surface which lead to increase the efciency. The results have
proved that the reduction of reection losses causes the increment
of photocurrent and efciency.
The goal of achieving photovoltaic conversion efciencies of
11.23% is desirable not only as a scientic achievement and
aids in specialized applications, but can also reduce the cost
of large-scale solar electric generation using the electrochemi-

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