| Abstract: | Antireflective light trapping glass nanostructures fabricated by a non‐lithographic process are investigated for their angle dependent properties to improve the omnidirectional performance of solar modules. Optical transmission and solar cell module I‐V measurements are used to understand the dependence of angular performance of nanostructures in the packaging glass. Nanostructures 100–400 nm in height demonstrate an increase in solar light transmission both for normal as well as oblique incidence and measurements show that a ~200‐400 nm nanostructure height is optimum for solar modules, providing an absolute increase of 1% in the power conversion efficiency at normal incidence and a gain in short circuit current density over a 120° angular cone of solar incidence. This shows that packaging glass texturing can be an important and often‐overlooked method to yield substantial gain in solar module efficiency. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
