Design and fabrication of dust removal nanoarray structure on the surface of solar cell glass cover

A nanoarray structure was constructed on the quartz glass cover surface, which had both strong dust removal ability and significant anti-reflection. Firstly, a structure model of dust removal nanoarray was established to investigate the effects of the structural parameters such as the period, the depth, and the duty ratio. Then a nanoarray structure was prepared on the glass surface with nano-imprinting and plasma etching, then modified with atomic layer deposition to adjust its structural parameters. The results show that the dust removal performance of the glass cover improved by about 14% after being constructed a 500-nm period nanoarray structure. As the etching time and the number of deposited layers increased, the dust removal performance first increased and then decreased. After 30 min etching and 50 layers of atomic deposition, the nanoarray improved the dust removal performance of the glass cover by about 45%. Moreover, this nanoarray structure also had an obvious anti-reflection function, improving the transmittance within 350–1100 nm of the glass cover by 0.63% before dust fall, by 1.23% after the dust fall at a 30° inclination angle, and by 1.51% at a 60° inclination angle.