New Technology Used in Photovoltaic Cells

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NEW TECHNOLOGY USED IN PHOTOVOLTAIC CELL
A Research Paper on Energy By
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INTRODUCTION
This research paper seeks to investigate the new technology used in the photovoltaic cell
which can be significant for India in specific. India stands at an installed capacity of solar energy
of approximately 2.9 GW as in 2014. However, the government seeks to scale up the solar
energy generation to a cumulative 100 GW by 2022 with major consideration being taken to the
generating skilled workforce, indigenous solar PV manufacturing, mass production, innovation
in low cost of manufacturing process, application of locally and new available materials, less
material consumption, and higher energy conversion efficiency of the solar PV. Researchers
have investigated on numerous ways in which the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the solar
cell can be improved and some of these technologies can be effectively be used in India so as to
attain the targeted solar PV generation capacity (Boxwell, 2010).
A solar PV array is composed of numerous solar cells which individually converts the
radiant sunlight into electrical energy. The average efficiency of a normal solar cell is about
15%, which means that approximately 85% of the sunlight that hits the solar cells does not get
converted into electrical energy (Duffie, 2013). The current technologies that are currently being
developed or that have been improved from the current once seek to boost this efficiency to
improve the light captured by the solar PV and the solar energy converted. This research
proposes the light-sensitive nanoparticles such as layering gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)
technology for the solar PV which a group of scientist disclosed at Masdar Institute of Science
and Technology who came up with this technology as an intractable tradeoff between cost and
efficiency of the solar PV (Chaturvedi, 2009).
In this technology of light-sensitive nanoparticles known as gallium arsenide phosphide
(GaAsP) technology are used since they are known to increase radiant light absorption and also

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more flexible material and less expensive. These researchers established a different solar cell
which is a combination of two dissimilar layers of materials that has a high sunlight absorption
capability so as to absorb a larger energy range from the sunlight. The team called this
technology as a Step Cell since the double layers are organized in a stepwise manner, with the
beneath layer the solar cell jutting out so as to uncover all the layers to the sunlight above. This
technology has the possibility of attaining 40% theoretical efficiency and 35% practical
efficiency (Duffie, 2013).
Figure 1: Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP) technology for the Photovoltaic Cells
Currently, the majority of solar PV used in India utilizes the silicon crystalline solar cells
which have proved to be less efficient during the conversion of sunlight into electrical energy
despite being cheap to manufacture (Wayne, 2016). The low sunlight-to-electricity conversion
efficiency of silicon is as a result of the bandgap characteristic of silicon which stops the
conversion of photons of higher-energy like green, green, and blue waves into electrical energy
efficiently by the semiconductor. Instead, specifically the photons of lower energy like those
emitted by longer waves of red light are converted efficiently into electricity. Scientists have