Areas with abundant sunlight, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), are optimal for photovoltaic (PV) power generation. However, the average power loss of photovoltaic modules caused by dust accumulation is extreme and may reach 1%/day, necessitating frequent cleaning which adds to the cost of operations and maintenance. One of the solutions to the problem of PV soiling is to develop anti-soil coatings, where hydrophilic or hydrophobic coatings with spectral characteristics suitable for PV applications are added to the outer layer of PV glass. However, the effectiveness of such coatings depends extensively on climatic conditions and geographical locations. Since coatings add to the cost of solar panels, it is imperative that they are first tested for suitability at the intended location and/or in similar weather conditions prior to their large-scale deployment. This critical review focuses on various anti-dust technologies employed to mitigate the PV soiling issue. The in-depth comparison of the various developed techniques and materials aims at providing a relevant input in adapting the right technology based on particles’ accumulation mechanism, weather conditions, and geographical location. Though the mechanical cleaning process is the most used solution to date, development of thin film anti-dust coating could be a better alternative—when it is relevant—due to its abrasion-free capability, large deployment, economic viability, and durability. This review aims at serving as a reference in this topic, thereby paving the way to adapting efficient anti-dust coatings, especially in the MENA region and/or desert environment at large, where it is the most relevant.

We report on several state of the art thin films coating technologies including physical vapor deposition (PVD) and solution process deposition techniques. Such techniques have their own significance to develop the energy efficiency devices. Choosing the right technique has become very critical in recent days as the scaling varies significantly with the technology. Thus, it becomes obvious to pick-up the right deposition procedure according to the needs where substrate size, film thickness, and required surface roughness are critically involved. Among all techniques, PVD offers various advantages, which include full control over growth, pristine film quality, large-scale fabrication, stacking of thin films, co-deposition flexibility, and controlling of the deposition temperature. In addition, such techniques can be adapted in small-scale research based labs with capping in terms of budget. Such vapor deposition processes also result in pin-hole free, homogeneous and continuous thin films which are highly desirable parameters for many energy related applications. Solution process techniques such as dip, spin, blade, and roll coating techniques are also discussed to provide an overall view. This report aims to give in-depth cross sectional review of all deposition techniques considering both positive and negative sides. PVD growth processes are very efficient where pattering of films are very significantly required. Hence, in this work, we have captured many deposition techniques where the properties of the films are very crucial to end up with different morphologies. The goal is to compare various techniques as a key parameter to control the fine formation of thin films. We are convinced that our report will show substantial importance to a wider group of materials scientists, chemists, physicists, and to the wider photovoltaic community to pick the best-suited vehicle for thin film growth purposes.

The most rapidly expanding type of solar cells are the Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs), because of its high device performance, ease of synthesis, high open-circuit voltage, and affordability. Despite these advantages, the development of perovskite-based solar cells continues to be impeded by the issues with perovskite stability and the utilization of the hazardous heavy element lead (Pb). The study emphasizes on the bifacial structure that maintains the conventional absorber layer and electron transport layer (ETL) in the optimized PSC structure. This study employs SCAPS software for device simulation to comprehensively analyze how various parameters affect the performance of solar cells. Additionally, doping concentration variation in both ETL and HTL are explored. The simulation reveals that changing device structure from monofacial to bifacial significantly influences PSC performance, demonstrating that optimizing individual layers effectively enhances overall solar cell performance. The optimized structure achieves impressive PSC performance metrics through parametric analysis, such as voltage (V_OC) of 1.18 V, fill factor (FF) of 82.24%, current density (J_SC) of 27.12 mA/cm², power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 27.90% for an incident solar spectrum from the ETL side, and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.86% for an incident solar spectrum from the HTL side, the calculated bifaciality factor (BF) for this structure is 71.18%.