Towards ultra-thin plasmonic silicon wafer solar cells with minimized efficiency loss

Zhang, Yinan; Stokes, Nicholas; Jia, Baohua; Fan, Shanhui; Gu, Min

doi:10.1038/srep04939

Towards ultra-thin plasmonic silicon wafer solar cells with minimized efficiency loss

Journal Article · Tue May 13 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Scientific Reports

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/srep04939· OSTI ID:1624710

Zhang, Yinan ^[1]; Stokes, Nicholas ^[2]; Jia, Baohua ^[2]; Fan, Shanhui ^[3]; Gu, Min ^[2]

Swinburne Univ. of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC (Australia). Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology. Centre for Micro-Photonics; DOE/OSTI
Swinburne Univ. of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC (Australia). Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology. Centre for Micro-Photonics
Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Ginzton Lab. Dept. of Electrical Engineering

The cost-effectiveness of market-dominating silicon wafer solar cells plays a key role in determining the competiveness of solar energy with other exhaustible energy sources. Reducing the silicon wafer thickness at a minimized efficiency loss represents a mainstream trend in increasing the cost-effectiveness of wafer-based solar cells. In this paper we demonstrate that, using the advanced light trapping strategy with a properly designed nanoparticle architecture, the wafer thickness can be dramatically reduced to only around 1/10 of the current thickness (180 mm) without any solar cell efficiency loss at 18.2%. Nanoparticle integrated ultra-thin solar cells with only 3% of the current wafer thickness can potentially achieve 15.3% efficiency combining the absorption enhancement with the benefit of thinner wafer induced open circuit voltage increase. This represents a 97% material saving with only 15% relative efficiency loss. These results demonstrate the feasibility and prospect of achieving high-efficiency ultra-thin silicon wafer cells with plasmonic light trapping.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-07ER46426

OSTI ID:: 1624710

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Journal Name: Scientific Reports Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 4; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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