Modification of PV behavior using dissipative MTM

Abstract

In this work, double layer photovoltaic cell (PV) is introduced in which the materials for the two layer are different. They are antireflection coating (ARC) layer covered by metamaterial (MTM) bounded by glass substrate and covered by air. The reflectance of the solar cell is studied. The effect of the MTM parameters on reflectance is studied. Results showed that the reflectance can be controlled by changing the reflectance index of MTM. Solar energy is an important source of energy due to its sustainability and availability in nature. The main component in this system is PV. Many studies focused in enhancing the efficiency of the system by improving the internal structure of the PV by the addition of antireflection coating (ARC) [1]. Single [2-3] or double [4-6] ARC layers are used to achieve minimum reflectance. A common example of ARC is SiN x for its high refractive index value [2]. In this paper, we extend our work [7] by considering dissipative Metamaterial (MTM). The proposed PV cell consists of double layers (Fig. 1) which are ARC made of SiN x with refractive index n 2 and MTM layer with complex refractive index n 1 =n-i. Both layers are deposited on glass substrate with refractive index n s and covered by air with refractive index n 0. n 0 (Air) a d 1 n 1 (MTM) b d 2 c n 2 (SiN x) n s (Glass) Fig 1: The schematic of the proposed nanostructure PV Cell Following [8-9], the reflectance for our system is derived for both TE and TM polarization. Then, the total reflectance R for the PV cell is defined as the average of both values R TE (TE reflectance) and R TM (TM reflectance): TE TM 2 RR R (1) The total reflectance (equation (1)) is solved using maple 13 to verify the characteristics of the proposed PV cell.