• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.791-802
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• 2023

The manual inspection of photovoltaic (PV) panels to meet the requirements of inspection work for large-scale PV power plants is challenging. We present a hot spot detection and positioning method to detect hot spots in batches and locate their latitudes and longitudes. First, a network based on the YOLOv3 architecture was utilized to identify hot spots. The innovation is to modify the RU_1 unit in the YOLOv3 model for hot spot detection in the far field of view and add a neural network residual unit for fusion. In addition, because of the misidentification problem in the infrared images of the solar PV panels, the DeepLab v3+ model was adopted to segment the PV panels to filter out the misidentification caused by bright spots on the ground. Finally, the latitude and longitude of the hot spot are calculated according to the geometric positioning method utilizing known information such as the drone's yaw angle, shooting height, and lens field-of-view. The experimental results indicate that the hot spot recognition rate accuracy is above 98%. When keeping the drone 25 m off the ground, the hot spot positioning error is at the decimeter level.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.154-163
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• 2024

The energy demand in the world is expected to exceed 740 million TJ by 2040 and our dependence on fossil fuels needs to be switched to sustainable and renewable energy sources like solar energy. Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) is one of the best approaches to extracting solar energy. There are more than 200 BIPV products in the market currently but when it comes to integrating these products into the technical aspects such as buildings' structural integrity, thermal, daylight retainment and aesthetic prospects to be considered. The share of BIPV integration potential of different building types in the world of residential, agricultural, industrial, commercial and other buildings account for 66%, 4.8%, 8.1%, 19.9%, and 1.2% accordingly. Many solar technologies developed to achieve architectural requirements, but the main problem is the trade-off between efficiency and aesthetic appeal, which is less than 10% in coloured and transparent solar modules. This paper discusses the different applications of solar photovoltaics (PV) in building architecture, technical requirements, and different module technologies. The article provides a comprehensive guide for researchers and designers working on the development of BIPV integrations.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.6-16
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• 2024

The efficiency of silicon solar cells is approaching a theoretical limit referred to as 'the state of the art'. Consequently, maintaining efficiency is more productive than pursuing improvements the last room for limiting efficiency. One of the primary considerations in silicon module conservation is the occurrence of failures and degradation. Degradation can be mitigated during the cell manufacturing stage, unlike physical and spontaneous failure. It is mostly because the chemical reaction is triggered by the carrier generation of thermal and light injection, an inherent aspect of the solar cell environment. Therefore, numerous researchers and cell manufacturers are engaged in implementing mitigation strategies based on the physical degradation mechanism.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.306.1-306.1
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• 2016

ZnO semiconductor material has been widely utilized in various applications in semiconductor device technology owing to its unique electrical and optical features. It is a promising as solar cell material, because of its low cost, n-type conductivity and wide direct band gap. In this work ZnO/Si heterojunctions were fabricated by using pulsed laser deposition. Vacuum chamber was evacuated to a base pressure of approximately $2{\times}10^{-6}Torr$. ZnO thin films were grown on p-Si (100) substrate at oxygen partial pressure from 5mTorr to 40mTorr. Growth temperature of ZnO thin films was set to 773K. A pulsed (10 Hz) Nd:YAG laser operating at a wavelength of 266 nm was used to produce a plasma plume from an ablated a ZnO target, whose density of laser energy was $10J/cm^2$. Thickness of all the thin films of ZnO was about 300nm. The optical property was characterized by photoluminescence and crystallinity of ZnO was analyzed by X-ray diffraction. For fabrication ZnO/Si heterojunction diodes, indium metal and Al grid patterns were deposited on back and front side of the solar cells by using thermal evaporator, respectively. Finally, current-voltage characteristics of the ZnO/Si structure were studied by using Keithly 2600. Under Air Mass 1.5 Global solar simulator with an irradiation intensity of $100mW/cm^2$, the electrical properties of ZnO/Si heterojunction photovoltaic devices were analyzed.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.35.1-35.1
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• 2011

New photovoltaic (PV) materials and manufacturing approaches are needed for meeting the demand for lower-cost solar cells. The prototypal thin-film photovoltaic absorbers (CdTe and $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$) can achieve solar conversion efficiencies of up to 20% and are now commercially available, but the presence of toxic (Cd,Se) and expensive elemental components (In, Te) is a real issue as the demand for photovoltaics rapidly increases. To overcome these limitations, there has been substantial interest in developing viable alternative materials, such as $Cu_2ZnSnS_4$ (CZTS) is an emerging solar absorber that is structurally similar to CIGS, but contains only earth abundant, non-toxic elements and has a near optimal direct band gap energy of 1.4~1.6 ev and a large absorption coefficient of ${\sim}10^4\;cm^{-1}$. The CZTS absorber layers are grown and investigated by various fabrication methods, such as thermal evaporation, e-beam evaporation with a post sulfurization, sputtering, non-vacuum sol-gel, pulsed laser, spray-pyrolysis method and electrodeposition technique. In the present work, we report an alternative method for large area deposition of CZTS thin films that is potentially high throughput and inexpensive when used to produce monolithically integrated solar panel modules. Specifically, we have developed an aqueous chemical approach based on chemical bath deposition (CBD) with a subsequent sulfurization heat treatment. Samples produced by our method were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, absorbance and photoluminescence. The results show that this inexpensive and relatively benign process produces thin films of CZTS exhibiting uniform composition, kesterite crystal structure, and good optical properties. A preliminary solar cell device was fabricated to demonstrate rectifying and photovoltaic behavior.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.116.1-116.1
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• 2011

Materials with a combination of high electrical conductivity and optical transparency are important components of many electronic and optoelectronic devices such as liquid crystal displays, solar cells, and light emitting diodes. In this study, to fabricate a low-resistance and high optical transparent electrode film for organic photovoltaic, the following steps were performed: the design and manufacture of an electroforming stamp mold, the fabrication of thermal roll imprinted (TRI) poly-carbonate (PC) patterned films, the manufacture of high-conductivity and low-resistance Ag paste which was filled into patterned PC film using a doctor blade process and then coated with a thin film layer of conductive polymer by a spin coating process. As a result of these imprinting processes the PC films obtained a line width of $10{\pm}0.5{\mu}m$, a channel length of $500{\pm}2{\mu}m$, and a pattern depth of $7.34{\pm}0.5{\mu}m$. After the Ag paste was used to fill part of the patterned film with conductive polymer coating, the following parameters were obtained: a sheet resistance of $9.65{\Omega}$/sq, optical transparency values were 83.69 % at a wavelength of 550 nm.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.133-141
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• 2015

Influence of Ag nanoparticles on optical and photovoltaic properties of, silicon substrates, silicon solar cells and glass have been investigated. Silver nanoparticles have been fabricated by evaporation of thin Ag layers followed by the thermal annealing. The surface plasmon resonance peak was observed in the absorbance spectrum at 470 nm of glass with deposited silver nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that deposition of silver nanoparticles on silicon substrates was accompanied with a significant decrease in reflectance at the wavelength 360-1100 nm and increase of the absorption at wavelengths close to the band gap for Si substrates. We studied influence of Ag nanoparticles on photovoltaic characteristics of silicon solar cells without and with common use antireflection coating (ARC). It is shown that silver nanoparticles deposited onto the front surface of the solar cells without ARC led to increase in the photocurrent density by 39% comparing to cells without Ag nanoparticles. Contrary to this, solar cells with Ag nanoparticles deposited on front surface with ARC discovered decrease in photocurrent density. The improved performance of investigated cells was attributed to Ag-plasmonic excitations that reduce the reflectance from the silicon surface and ultimately leads to the enhanced light absorption in the cell. This study showed possibility of application of Ag nanoparticles for the improvement of the conversion efficiency of waferbased silicon solar cells instead of usual ARC.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.551-560
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• 2011

In this paper, a cooling system that includes a heat spreader and a natural convective heat sink is proposed for the cooling of a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) module. The heat spreader and the natural convective heat sink are designed on the basis of previous analytical investigations. In order to evaluate the proposed cooling system, we conducted experimental investigations varying the heat rate and the inclined angle of the cooling system. From the experimental results, it is found that the proposed cooling system satisfies the design constraints for good operation of the CPV module. Finally, a correlation is suggested for estimating the effects of the heat rate and the inclined angle on the thermal performance of the natural convective heat sink is suggested.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.75-79
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• 2015

Recently, $Cu_2ZnSn(S_xSe_{1-x})_4$ (CZTSSe) has been received a tremendous attraction as light absorber material in thin film solar cells (TFSCs), because of its earth abundance, inexpensive and non-toxic constituents and versatile material characteristics. Kesterite CZTSSe thin films were synthesized by sulfo-selenization of sputtered Cu/Sn/Zn stacked metallic precursors. The sulfo-selenization of Cu/Sn/Zn stacked metallic precursor thin films has been carried out in a graphite box using rapid thermal annealing (RTA) technique. Annealing process was done under sulfur and selenium vapor pressure using Ar gas at $520^{\circ}C$ for 10 min. The effect of tuning Se/(S+Se) precursor composition ratio on the properties of CZTSSe films has been investigated. The XRD, Raman, FE-SEM and XRF results indicate that the properties of sulfo-selenized CZTSSe thin films strongly depends on the Se/(S+Se) composition ratio. In particular, the CZTSSe TFSCs with Se/(S+Se) = 0.37 exhibits the best power conversion efficiency of 4.83% with $V_{oc}$ of 467 mV, $J_{sc}$ of $18.962mA/cm^2$ and FF of 54%. The systematic changes observed with increasing Se/(S+Se) ratio have been discussed in detail.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.716-720
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• 2021

In this study, we examine the availability of a cooling patch to enhance the output power of a hybrid energy device (HED) comprising a photovoltaic cell (PVC) and a thermoelectric generator (TEG). The cooling patch attached on the back of the TEG drops the temperature of the PVC via the TEG and makes a large thermal gradient across the TEG under irradiances in a range of 200 to 1000 W/m². The cooling patch is more effective for the output power of the HED as the irradiance increases, and it enhances the maximum output power of the HED to 42.1 mW at an irradiance of 1000 W/m². The increment in the maximum output power reaches 27% owing to the attachment of the cooling patch that does not consume any power.