A Review on the Efficiency Enhancement Techniques of Solar Cell

The efficiency of silicon-based solar cells, averaging approximately 20%, requires improvements for maximum performance. This review highlights various potential techniques for enhancing the structural efficiency of solar cells from different studies conducted by researchers worldwide. The techniques evaluated include utilising a cooling system, metamaterial cell, antireflection coating, black silicon surface texturisation, multijunction cell, heterojunction cell, perovskite cell, and TOPCon, with a comparative analysis performed. Metamaterial solar cells emerge as a promising approach, demonstrating an impressive efficiency of 90% due to their ability to absorb a broad spectrum (UV to NIR). Among the surface-approach techniques, ARC is a better option in increasing efficiency by 3.3% using MgF2 and CaF2, but the small improvement gain is a concern. From an economic perspective, ARC and TOPCon are the techniques that are low-cost implementations with surface-based and structural architecture manipulation respectively. TOPCon also proves itself to be the best option among the commercially available techniques, with an efficiency of 24.58% and passivation performance that reduces shading and resistance losses. A suggestion is given on further improving efficiency by combining the techniques. The surface-based techniques are applied together with the structure-based techniques such as ARC with multijunction to bring the efficiency of around 50% combined, giving a new area to explore. In essence, this review highlights potential advanced techniques such as metamaterial cells and the collaborative integration of different techniques to significantly enhance the efficiency of a conventional solar cell which maximises its potential.