Photon Management in Thin-Film Solar Cells

Enhanced photon management in silicon thin film solar cells with different front and back interface texture

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/srep29639 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Asman Tamang ◽

Aswin Hongsingthong ◽

Vladislav Jovanov ◽

Porponth Sichanugrist ◽

Bakhtiar A. Khan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Silicon Thin Film ◽

Photon Management

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Semiperiodic Ultra-Broadband Double-Grating to Improve c-Si Thin-Film Solar Cell’s Optical Absorption, through Numerical Structural Optimization

Crystals ◽

10.3390/cryst9050264 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 264 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mandana Jalali ◽

Hamid Nadgaran ◽

Daniel Erni

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Optical Absorption ◽

Structural Optimization ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Physical Parameters ◽

Reference Structure ◽

Photon Management ◽

Integrated Optical ◽

Si Thin Film

Plasmonic gratings provide effective photon management techniques in thin-film solar cells, capable of extending the optical thickness of the solar cell’s active layer. However, the ultra-broadband nature of such application makes an optimal design of the grating structure quite challenging, since a fully periodic grating operates only in specific spectral ranges. To achieve a more broadband design, semiperiodicity is introduced, which, due to having controllable disorder, is an apt solution in broadband optical applications. In this work, semiperiodic double gratings as a broadband photon management technique are introduced in order to improve the optical absorption of c-Si thin-film solar cells, and optimized through numerical structural optimization. Physical parameters of both front and back gratings are determined taking the spectrally integrated optical absorption as the figure of merit and subsequently a semiperiodic double grating is established through adding defects to the fully periodic structure. It is shown that such semiperiodic structure is capable of enhancing the spectrally integrated optical absorption 88.6 % compared to a reference structure without gratings.

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Trade-off between Photon Management Efficacy and Material Quality in Thin-Film Solar Cells on Nanostructured Substrates of High Aspect Ratio Structures

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app8040616 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 616

Author(s):

Alan Chin ◽

Majid Keshavarz ◽

Qi Wang

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Aspect Ratio ◽

High Aspect Ratio ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Trade Off ◽

Material Quality ◽

Photon Management ◽

Nanostructured Substrates

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Approaching the Lambertian Limit in Randomly Textured Thin-Film Solar Cells

MRS Proceedings ◽

10.1557/opl.2012.694 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 1391 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Falk Lederer ◽

Stephan Fahr ◽

Carsten Rockstuhl ◽

Thomas Kirchartz

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Typical Feature ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Absorber Thickness ◽

Absorption Length ◽

Photon Management ◽

The Impact ◽

Effective Path

ABSTRACTThe Lambertian limit represents a benchmark for the enhancement of the effective path length in solar cells, which is important as soon as the absorption length exceeds the absorber thickness. In previous publications it has been shown that either extremely thick or extremely thin solar cells can be driven close to this limit by exploiting up to date photon management. In this contribution we show that the Lambertian limit can also be achieved with thin-film solar cells based on amorphous silicon for practically relevant absorber thicknesses. Departing from superstrates, which are currently incorporated into state-of-the-art thin-film solar cells, we show that their topology has simply to be downscaled to typical feature sizes of about 100 nm in order to achieve this goal. By systematically studying the impact of the modulation height and the lateral feature sizes of the incorporated textures and of the absorber thickness we are able to deduce intuitive guidelines how to approach the Lambertian limit in randomly textured thin-film solar cells.

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