Best Poster Presentation Award in the ICANS28 Conference

The poster “Front contact light trapping structures by design for maximum efficiency enhancement of thin film solar cells” by Hugo Águas, Manuel J. Mendes, Olalla S. Sobrado, Sirazul Haque, Miguel Alexandre, Manuel Chapa, Tiago Mateus, Elvira Fortunato and Rodrigo Martins, won the Best Poster Presentation Award in the ICANS28 Conference (28th International Conference on Amorphous and Nano-crystalline Semiconductors) from 4 to 9 August 2019, in Ecole Polytechnique, United Kingdom. Photonic structures in the wave-optics regime can reduce the thickness of photovoltaic (PV) devices while improving their photocurrent, which is the key to realize high-efficient low-cost and mechanically-flexible solar cells for use in a plethora of consumer-oriented applications (e.g. solar-powered mobile electronics and IoT, building-integrated PV, etc).  Wave-optical nano/micro-structures implemented at the topside of solar cells are currently one of the preferred light trapping (LT) solutions to attain efficiency enhancement due to the increment of the optical absorption achieved in the active medium of the devices. Here we present a practical, low-cost and large-area soft-patterning technique suitable to integrate metal-oxide based photonic nanostructures on the front contact of thin film solar cells based on amorphous silicon absorbers. ICANS conference, with a long journey of 54 years starting from 1965 in Prague is organized every two years at different worldwide locations by the worlds reference institutions in the field. In 2005 it was organized by CENIMAT and UNINOVA in Lisbon.