Mitigating Potential-Induced Degradation (PID) Using SiO2 ARC Layer

Potential-induced degradation (PID) of photovoltaic (PV) cells is one of the most severe types of degradation, where the output power losses in solar cells may even exceed 30%. In this article, we present the development of a suitable anti-reflection coating (ARC) structure of solar cells to mitigate the PID effect using a SiO2 ARC layer. Our PID testing experiments show that the proposed ARC layer can improve the durability and reliability of the solar cell, where the maximum drop in efficiency was equal to 0.69% after 96 h of PID testing using an applied voltage of 1000 V and temperature setting at 85 °C. In addition, we observed that the maximum losses in the current density are equal to 0.8 mA/cm2, compared with 4.5 mA/cm2 current density loss without using the SiO2 ARC layer.