A highly efficient light-trapping structure for thin-film silicon solar cells
- Solar Cell Technology Group, Key Laboratory of Solar Thermal Energy and Photovoltaic System of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electrical Engineering, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 (China)
- State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083 (China)
A highly efficient light-trapping structure, consisting of a diffractive grating, a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and a metal reflector was proposed. As an example, the proposed light-trapping structure with an indium tin oxide (ITO) diffraction grating, an a-Si:H/ITO DBR and an Ag reflector was optimized by the simulation via rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) for a 2.0-{mu}m-thick c-Si solar cell with an optimized ITO front antireflection (AR) layer under the air mass 1.5 (AM1.5) solar illumination. The weighted absorptance under the AM1.5 solar spectrum (A{sub AM1.5}) of the solar cell can reach to 69%, if the DBR is composed of 4 pairs of a-Si:H/ITOs. If the number of a-Si:H/ITO pairs is up to 8, a larger A{sub AM1.5} of 72% can be obtained. In contrast, if the Ag reflector is not adopted, the combination of the optimized ITO diffraction grating and the 8-pair a-Si:H/ITO DBR can only result in an A{sub AM1.5} of 68%. As the reference, A{sub AM1.5} = 31% for the solar cell only with the optimized ITO front AR layer. So, the proposed structure can make the sunlight highly trapped in the solar cell. The adoption of the metal reflector is helpful to obtain highly efficient light-trapping effect with less number of DBR pairs, which makes that such light-trapping structure can be fabricated easily. (author)
- OSTI ID:
- 21262146
- Journal Information:
- Solar Energy, Vol. 84, Issue 1; Other Information: Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved; ISSN 0038-092X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Developing Efficient Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Devices
In-situ X-Ray Analysis of Rapid Thermal Processing for Thin-Film Solar Cells: Closing the Gap between Production and Laboratory Efficiency