Design and fabrication of color coatings for high-performance building-integrated photovoltaics

Materials used on a building's exterior must have high transmittance and excellent aesthetic design. In this study, the optimum design was achieved by calculating the optical properties and color distribution to fabricate a high-quality multilayer color thin film through sputtering, and a silicon solar panel was equipped with transmissive- and reflective-type color optical thin films. A three-layer color thin film with a Nb2O5/SiO2/Nb2O5 structure exhibited an average transmittance of over 85.96% and a clear blue color. Simultaneously, it maintained a high overall efficiency with a maximum output value greater than 99% of the value of a reference silicon solar cell. Therefore, the sputtered multilayer thin-film coating not only offers a fracile approach to manufacture colorful solar panels, but also has great potential for various industrial applications such as building-integrated solar power generation, automobile production, and glass production.