Surface engineering of zinc sulphide film for augmenting the performance of polycrystalline silicon solar cells

The current work focused on enhancing solar cell’s Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) while using zinc sulphide (ZnS) material as Anti-Reflective Coating (ARC). The ZnS layers were deposited over the solar cell surface by RF sputtering technique. The coating was performed in argon gas atmosphere with sputtering time such as 10, 20, 30 & 40 min represented as S-I, S-II, S-III and S-IV respectively. The power conversion efficiency of ZnS coating on polycrystalline silicon solar cells was studied by evaluating optical properties, electrical characteristics, structure morphology and temperature study. It is observed that the S-III coating exhibits optimum hall mobility (µ),improved carrier concentration (N) and electrical resistivity (ρ) and the measured values are 12.88 cm2V -1 s - 1 , 3.98×10-3 Ω-cm and 21.88×1020 cm-3 respectively. The maximum PCE of 17.39% and 19.12% are obtained for S-III coating at open source condition and controlled source condition respectively. The effect of operating temperature on ZnS coated solar cells at both open source and controlled source condition is also investigated. The results revealed that the ZnS can be reliable ARC for improving the power conversion efficiency of solar cells.