Fabrication of the Functional Thin Film Using Alkali Silicate Solution for Floating Photovoltaic Applications

In photovoltaic (PV) systems, residual dust on the front tempered glass of a solar module decreases the solar power conversion efficiency. For the natural removal of environmental contaminants, these days, self-cleaning technologies are an attractive route to overcome this issue. Compared to TiO2 thin films with super-hydrophilic and UV-active photocatalytic properties, silica-or silicate-based thin films have greater potential for PV application because of their merits including long-term stability, high hardness, optical compensation of transmittance or reflectance, physical and chemical strength, electrical insulation. Such materials are so easy to produce on industrial scales at manageable costs. In this paper, silicate thin films were spray-coated using alkali metal silicate solutions, and the as-deposited silicate thin films were post-annealed at temperatures of 150, 200, 300, 400, 450 and 500 degrees C for 20 min. The effects of post-annealing temperature were investigated by examining the optical and wetting properties of surfaces. We also applied aqueous silicate solutions used anti-reflection layer for Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) solar cell with area 0.600 cm(2) in size, and in applying these solutions the solar cell efficiency of the cell increased by 0.42% compared to the original.