Spray-deposited EuOCl film for spectral shifters applications in silicon photovoltaic technology

Rare-earth oxhyhalides have great potential due to their unique 4f electronic configuration, which provides them interesting luminescent properties. Among all the possibilities, EuOCl is attracting a lot of attention because it can be stable in divalent and trivalent states providing the possibility to manage the light emission effectively. This opens up the opportunity to apply EuOCl films as spectral shifter in silicon photovoltaic technology to improve the device output power. Our study demonstrates that it is possible to prepare EuOCl films using spray pyrolysis technique and apply them as a spectral shifter to produce an relative power output improvement of 16.8 %. • EuOCl films were successfully prepared by spray pyrolysis technique. • The EuOCl films on quartz have been applied on top of c-Si solar cell as a downshifting material. • The achieved relative efficiency improvement was 1.74 %.