Surface anti-reflection (AR) with nanometer-scaled texture has shown excellent light trapping performance involving optical devices. In this work, we developed a simple and lithography-free structure replication process to obtain large scale surface cup-shaped nano-pillar (CSNP) arrays for the first time. A method of depositing was used for pattern transfer based on PMMA pre-coated through-hole anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) thin film (~500 nm), and eventually, the uniformity of the transferred nanostructures was guaranteed. From the spectrum (250 nm~2000 nm) dependent measurements, the CSNP nanostructured Si showed excellent AR performance when compared with that of the single-polished Si. Moreover, the CSNP was found to be polarization insensitive and less dependent on incidence angles (≤80°) over the whole spectrum. To further prove the excellent antireflective properties of the CSNP structure, thin film solar cell models were built and studied. The maximum value of Jph for CSNP solar cells shows obvious improvement comparing with that of the cylinder, cone and parabola structured ones. Specifically, in comparison with the optimized Si3N4 thin film solar cell, an increment of 54.64% has been achieved for the CSNP thin film solar cell.

Nanostructure engineering has proven to be one of the most effective strategies to improve the efficiency of photoelectric devices. Herein, we numerically investigate and experimentally demonstrate a self-assembled silicon-based nanopillars and nanoholes structures, to improve the light absorption of photoelectric devices by an antireflection enhancement. The nanopillars and nanoholes structures are fabricated by the air–liquid interface self-assembly method based on polystyrene (PS) nanospheres. Additionally, the tunable antireflective properties with the different operation wavelength and nanostructures parameters have been discussed based on the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. The experimental result shows that the self-assembled silicon-based nanopillars and nanoholes structures can achieve the lowest reflectivity of 1.42% (nanopillars) and 5.83% (nanoholes) in the wavelength range of 250–800 nm, which reduced 95.97% and 84.83%, respectively, compared with the plane silicon. The operation mechanism of the tunable antireflective property of self-assembled nanopillars and nanoholes structures is also analyzed in the simulation. Our study suggests that the self-assembled nanopillars and nanoholes structures are potentially attractive as improving efficiency of photoelectric devices.