DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells

Abstract

Photovoltaic light trapping theory and experiment do not always clearly demonstrate how much useful optical absorption is enhanced, as opposed to parasitic absorption that cannot improve efficiencies. In this work, we develop a flexible flux plane method for capturing these parasitic losses within finite-difference time-domain simulations, which was applied to three classical types of light trapping cells (e.g., periodic, random and plasmonic). Then, a 2 mm-thick c-Si cell with a correlated random front texturing and a plasmonic back reflector is optimized. In the best case, 36.60 mA/cm2 Jsc is achieved after subtracting 3.74 mA/cm2 of parasitic loss in a 2-mm-thick c-Si cell slightly above the Lambertian limit.

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States). Birck Nanotechnology Center (BNC)
  2. Hanyang Univ., Seoul (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Electronic Engineering
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office; National Science Foundation (NSF); National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
OSTI Identifier:
1579880
Grant/Contract Number:  
EE0004946; EEC1454315-CAREER; 2014R1A1A2054440
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Optical Materials Express
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 5; Journal Issue: 9; Journal ID: ISSN 2159-3930
Publisher:
Optical Society of America (OSA)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
14 SOLAR ENERGY

Citation Formats

Chung, H., Jung, K-Y, and Bermel, P. Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1364/OME.5.002054.
Chung, H., Jung, K-Y, & Bermel, P. Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells. United States. https://doi.org/10.1364/OME.5.002054
Chung, H., Jung, K-Y, and Bermel, P. Mon . "Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells". United States. https://doi.org/10.1364/OME.5.002054. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1579880.
@article{osti_1579880,
title = {Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells},
author = {Chung, H. and Jung, K-Y and Bermel, P.},
abstractNote = {Photovoltaic light trapping theory and experiment do not always clearly demonstrate how much useful optical absorption is enhanced, as opposed to parasitic absorption that cannot improve efficiencies. In this work, we develop a flexible flux plane method for capturing these parasitic losses within finite-difference time-domain simulations, which was applied to three classical types of light trapping cells (e.g., periodic, random and plasmonic). Then, a 2 mm-thick c-Si cell with a correlated random front texturing and a plasmonic back reflector is optimized. In the best case, 36.60 mA/cm2 Jsc is achieved after subtracting 3.74 mA/cm2 of parasitic loss in a 2-mm-thick c-Si cell slightly above the Lambertian limit.},
doi = {10.1364/OME.5.002054},
journal = {Optical Materials Express},
number = 9,
volume = 5,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 5 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Modeling Light Trapping in Nanostructured Solar Cells
journal, November 2011

  • Ferry, Vivian E.; Polman, Albert; Atwater, Harry A.
  • ACS Nano, Vol. 5, Issue 12, p. 10055-10064
  • DOI: 10.1021/nn203906t

3-D optical modeling of thin-film silicon solar cells on diffraction gratings: Optical modeling of thin silicon solar cells on gratings
journal, January 2012

  • Isabella, Olindo; Solntsev, Serge; Caratelli, Diego
  • Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Vol. 21, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1002/pip.1257

Plasmonics for improved photovoltaic devices
journal, February 2010

  • Atwater, Harry A.; Polman, Albert
  • Nature Materials, Vol. 9, Issue 3, p. 205-213
  • DOI: 10.1038/nmat2629

Design of GaAs Solar Cells Operating Close to the Shockley–Queisser Limit
journal, April 2013


Development of micromorph tandem solar cells on flexible low-cost plastic substrates
journal, June 2009


Advances in Light Trapping for Hydrogenated Nanocrystalline Silicon Solar Cells
journal, January 2013


Plasmonic light trapping in thin-film Si solar cells
journal, January 2012


Thermodynamic Upper Bound on Broadband Light Coupling with Photonic Structures
journal, October 2012


Low cost and high performance Al nanoparticles for broadband light trapping in Si wafer solar cells
journal, April 2012

  • Zhang, Yinan; Ouyang, Zi; Stokes, Nicholas
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 100, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3703121

Light trapping in ultrathin plasmonic solar cells
journal, January 2010

  • Ferry, Vivian E.; Verschuuren, Marc A.; Li, Hongbo B. T.
  • Optics Express, Vol. 18, Issue S2
  • DOI: 10.1364/OE.18.00A237

Improved light trapping in microcrystalline silicon solar cells by plasmonic back reflector with broad angular scattering and low parasitic absorption
journal, April 2013

  • Tan, Hairen; Sivec, Laura; Yan, Baojie
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4802451

Three-dimensional contour FDTD modeling of scattering from single and multiple bodies
journal, January 1993

  • Jurgens, T. G.; Taflove, A.
  • IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 41, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1109/8.273315

Novel conformal technique to reduce staircasing artifacts at material boundaries for FDTD modeling of the bioheat equation
journal, June 2007


Plasmonic Light Trapping in Thin-film Silicon Solar Cells with Improved Self-Assembled Silver Nanoparticles
journal, July 2012

  • Tan, Hairen; Santbergen, Rudi; Smets, Arno H. M.
  • Nano Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1021/nl301521z

Photonic crystal biosensor based on angular spectrum analysis
journal, January 2010


Understanding of photocurrent enhancement in real thin film solar cells: towards optimal one-dimensional gratings
journal, December 2010

  • Naqavi, Ali; Söderström, Karin; Haug, Franz-Josef
  • Optics Express, Vol. 19, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1364/OE.19.000128

Enhancement of light trapping in thin-film hydrogenated microcrystalline Si solar cells using back reflectors with self-ordered dimple pattern
journal, October 2008

  • Sai, Hitoshi; Fujiwara, Hiroyuki; Kondo, Michio
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 93, Issue 14
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.2993351

Effect of self-orderly textured back reflectors on light trapping in thin-film microcrystalline silicon solar cells
journal, May 2009

  • Sai, Hitoshi; Kondo, Michio
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 105, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3108689

A high-resolution interpolation at arbitrary interfaces for the FDTD method
journal, January 1998

  • Nadobny, J.; Sullivan, D.; Wust, P.
  • IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 46, Issue 11
  • DOI: 10.1109/22.734576

Flux limiting embedded boundary technique for electromagnetic FDTD
journal, March 2008


Designing optimized nano textures for thin-film silicon solar cells
journal, January 2013

  • Jäger, Klaus; Fischer, Marinus; van Swaaij, René A. C. M. M.
  • Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue S4
  • DOI: 10.1364/OE.21.00A656

Optical characterisation of a spectrally tunable plasmonic reflector for application in thin-film silicon solar cells
journal, April 2013


Simple and Fast Method to Optimize Nanotextured Interfaces of Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells
journal, September 2010

  • Dewan, Rahul; Jovanov, Vladislav; Haase, Christian
  • Applied Physics Express, Vol. 3, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1143/APEX.3.092301

Finite-difference time-domain modeling of curved surfaces (EM scattering)
journal, April 1992

  • Jurgens, T. G.; Taflove, A.; Umashankar, K.
  • IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 40, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1109/8.138836

FDTD analysis of dielectric resonators with curved surfaces
journal, January 1997

  • Kaneda, N.; Houshmand, B.; Itoh, T.
  • IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 45, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1109/22.622937

Design of a plasmonic back reflector for silicon nanowire decorated solar cells
journal, January 2012


Improving thin-film crystalline silicon solar cell efficiencies with photonic crystals
journal, January 2007

  • Bermel, Peter; Luo, Chiyan; Zeng, Lirong
  • Optics Express, Vol. 15, Issue 25
  • DOI: 10.1364/OE.15.016986

Light-Trapping and Interface Morphologies of Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells on Multiscale Surface Textured Substrates
journal, January 2014

  • Tamang, Asman; Hongsingthong, Aswin; Sichanugrist, Porponth
  • IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Vol. 4, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2013.2280020

Statistical ray optics
journal, July 1982

  • Yablonovitch, Eli
  • Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 72, Issue 7, p. 899-907
  • DOI: 10.1364/JOSA.72.000899

Meep: A flexible free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method
journal, March 2010

  • Oskooi, Ardavan F.; Roundy, David; Ibanescu, Mihai
  • Computer Physics Communications, Vol. 181, Issue 3, p. 687-702
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.cpc.2009.11.008

Optimization of back reflector for high efficiency hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon solar cells
journal, December 2009

  • Yue, Guozhen; Sivec, Laura; Owens, Jessica M.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 26
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3279143

Lambertian light trapping in textured solar cells and light-emitting diodes: analytical solutions
journal, January 2002

  • Green, Martin A.
  • Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Vol. 10, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1002/pip.404

Toward the Lambertian Limit of Light Trapping in Thin Nanostructured Silicon Solar Cells
journal, November 2010


Improved red-response in thin film a-Si:H solar cells with soft-imprinted plasmonic back reflectors
journal, November 2009

  • Ferry, Vivian E.; Verschuuren, Marc A.; Li, Hongbo B. T.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 18
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3256187

Design of Nanostructured Solar Cells Using Coupled Optical and Electrical Modeling
journal, May 2012

  • Deceglie, Michael G.; Ferry, Vivian E.; Alivisatos, A. Paul
  • Nano Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 6, p. 2894-2900
  • DOI: 10.1021/nl300483y

Accurate FDTD modelling for dispersive media using rational function and particle swarm optimisation
journal, October 2014


Nanophotonic light-trapping theory for solar cells
journal, September 2011


Optimized Spatial Correlations for Broadband Light Trapping Nanopatterns in High Efficiency Ultrathin Film a-Si:H Solar Cells
journal, October 2011

  • Ferry, Vivian E.; Verschuuren, Marc A.; Lare, M. Claire van
  • Nano Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1021/nl202226r