Ricerc@Sapienza

The adoption of a-SiOx:H films obtained by PECVD in heterojunction solar cells is a key to further increase their efficiency, because of its transparency in the UV with respect to the commonly used a-Si:H. At the same time this layer must guarantee high surface passivation of the c-Si to be suitable in high efficiency solar cell manufacturing. On the other hand the application of amorphous materials like a-Si:H and SiNx on the cell frontside expose them to the mostly energetic part of the sun spectrum, leading to a metastability of their passivation properties.

In this study the copper and lead adsorption efficiency onto banana peels powder was investigated. The agro-industrial waste recovery represents one of the Circular Economy pillars. In the view of the synthesis of an environmentally friendly adsorbent material, the powder was used without any preliminary chemical or thermal activation, but only after simple washing, drying and grinding. The bio-adsorbent was characterized by the FTIR technique and tested in batch mode on synthetic aqueous solutions containing Pb and Cu in the range 10–90 mg·L− 1.