Abstract

To compare the light-scattering effectiveness of surface-textured solar cells of various design parameters such as density, diameter, refractive index, and location, this study used a new parameter, optical path length gain (OPLG), that is more sensitive than Haze. By modeling two-dimensional disordered textures as a structure that comprises many randomly distributed, small, spherical scatterers, ray-tracing simulations of surface-textured thin-film silicon solar cells were performed. The simulation results suggest that: (1) the optimal scatterer diameter for hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells is $\sim 50\mathrm{nm}$, producing an average OPLG of 3.5; and (2) the optimal scatterer diameter for a-Si:H/μc-Si:H (hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon) tandem cells is $\sim 75\mathrm{nm}$, producing an average OPLG of 3.4 and an increase in the bandwidth of the absorption spectrum of 14.5%.

© 2014 Optical Society of America

Light trapping in thin-film silicon solar cells with submicron surface texture

Rahul Dewan, Marko Marinkovic, Rodrigo Noriega, Sujay Phadke, Alberto Salleo, and Dietmar Knipp
Opt. Express 17(25) 23058-23065 (2009)

Thin-film a-Si:H solar cells processed on aluminum-induced texture (AIT) glass superstrates: prediction of light absorption enhancement

Nasim Sahraei, Marius Peters, Selvaraj Venkataraj, Armin G. Aberle, Sonya Calnan, Sven Ring, Bernd Stannowski, Rutger Schlatmann, and Rolf Stangl
Appl. Opt. 54(14) 4366-4373 (2015)

Light trapping in periodically textured amorphous silicon thin film solar cells using realistic interface morphologies

Vladislav Jovanov, Ujwol Palanchoke, Philipp Magnus, Helmut Stiebig, Jürgen Hüpkes, Porponth Sichanugrist, Makoto Konagai, Samuel Wiesendanger, Carsten Rockstuhl, and Dietmar Knipp
Opt. Express 21(S4) A595-A606 (2013)

Time domain simulation of tandem silicon solar cells with optimal textured light trapping enabled by the quadratic complex rational function

H. Chung, K-Y. Jung, X. T. Tee, and P. Bermel
Opt. Express 22(S3) A818-A832 (2014)

Analytical solution for haze values of aluminium-induced texture (AIT) glass superstrates for a-Si:H solar cells

Nasim Sahraei, Karen Forberich, Selvaraj Venkataraj, Armin G. Aberle, and Marius Peters
Opt. Express 22(S1) A53-A67 (2014)