Review on the graphene/Si Schottky barrier solar cells performance enhancement techniques

2D materials open a new and exciting area for PV research. One example is the Graphene/Si Schottky barrier solar cell (SBSC). Graphene is attractive material to be used in solar cells due to its high transparency, and electrical conductivity. The Gr/Si SBSC suffers from the carrier recombination at the Gr/Si interface, which leads to a low performance, and to solve that, different methods were investigated. This review will summarize the different techniques that was employed to enhance the Gr/Si Power conversion efficiency (). One of the techniques is using different interfacial layers between the Gr, and the Si such as Al₂O₃, MoS₂, P3HT, HfO₂, some graphene derivatives, and other materials. Another technique is doping the graphene with different material like HNO₃, AuCl₃, TFSA, Au, and Pt nanoparticles (NPs). Using different antireflection coating (ARC) is also one of the techniques that have been investigated, these materials included TiO₂, PMMA, and double ARC MgF₂, and ZnS. The first reported Gr/Si SBSC has achieved a 1.65 %, and applying these techniques has improved the performance of the Gr/Si SBSC over the years, reaching to a highest of 16.8 %, with a J_SC of 42.8 mA/cm² for a solar cell with 3 layers of Gr doped by HNO₃, and used PMMA as an ARC, in addition to some treatments applied to improve the performance.