Improvement in optical and electrical performance of hydrophobic and antireflective silica nanoparticles coating on PMMA for lightweight PV module

Abstract Contamination and weather-resistant property of anti-reflection coating obtained by the sol-gel process is crucial for practical applications. In this work, we used the stӧber method to make silica nanoparticles and used the spin coating approach to apply them to a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) substrate. We adopted a low-temperature surface treatment approach by placing silica-coated PMMA in chloroform, aqueous ammonia, and hexamethyldisilazane vapor-phase environment. The treated PMMA exhibits a maximum transmittance of 95.68% in the wavelength range of 500–1100 nm. The treated PMMA showed a decrease of 0.21% transmittance after checking it with contamination and weather-resistant test. The treated PMMA exhibits a water contact angle of 115.96°, making it hydrophobic which is almost ten times that of untreated PMMA. An increase in the current density from 33.23 to 34.37 mA/cm2 and an improvement in the efficiency of 3.54% was observed when the treated PMMA was placed onto a solar cell instead of uncoated PMMA for lightweight photovoltaic module applications.