Photonic Design and Electrical Evaluation of Dual-Functional Solar Cells for Energy Conversion and Display Applications

Colored solar cells (SCs) are highly useful for applications in esthetic building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs). However, the theoretical designs mostly focus on the color quality with rarely addressing the optoelectronic responses. Here, considering both color display and complete electrical evaluation, we report a color-controlled a-Si:H SC in purely planar configuration, which simultaneously exhibits the desired high-purity color and sustains a relatively high power conversion efficiency. The high-performance color display is realized by thin-film photonic designs with incorporating distributed Bragg reflector and anti-reflection coating layers. Moreover, a comprehensive optoelectronic simulation addressing both the electromagnetic and internal semiconductor physics has been realized, which shows that the power conversion efficiencies of the designed red-green-blue (RGB) SCs can be 4.88%, 5.58%, and 6.54%, respectively. The physical principles of optimizing the colorful SCs with the tunable hue, high saturation, and brightness are explained, and we take the logo of “Soochow University” as an example to demonstrate the wide-angle pattern display by the SCs. The study paves the way of realizing the colored SCs targeting esthetic BIPV applications.