Front/Rear Decoupled Texturing in Refractive and Diffractive Regimes for Ultra-Thin Silicon-Based Solar Cells

Isabella, Olindo; Ingenito, Andrea; Linssen, Dane N.; Zeman, Miro

doi:10.1364/pv.2013.pm4c.2

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Naturally, demonstrating such high light trapping performance in real devices is another matter, which needs to be tackled next. Finally, the high performance of [15] and [16] highlights the need to achieve both high performance in light trapping and in antireflection, ideally together. All µc-Si:H data points were also qualitatively assessed with the optical constants of c-Si [17].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to assess light trapping structures versus a Lambertian Scatterer for solar cells?

Schuster¹,

Bozzola²,

Andreani³

et al. 2014

Opt. Express

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We propose a new figure of merit to assess the performance of light trapping nanostructures for solar cells, which we call the light trapping efficiency (LTE). The LTE has a target value of unity to represent the performance of an ideal Lambertian scatterer, although this is not an absolute limit but rather a benchmark value. Since the LTE aims to assess the nanostructure itself, it is, in principle, independent of the material, fabrication method or technology used. We use the LTE to compare numerous proposals in the literature and to identify the most promising light trapping strategies. We find that different types of photonic structures allow approaching the Lambertian limit, which shows that the light trapping problem can be approached from multiple directions. The LTE of theoretical structures significantly exceeds that of experimental structures, which highlights the need for theoretical descriptions to be more comprehensive and to take all relevant electro-optic effects into account.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to assess light trapping structures versus a Lambertian Scatterer for solar cells?

Schuster¹,

Bozzola²,

Andreani³

et al. 2014

Opt. Express

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“…Analyzing the highest performing light-trapping structures [75,76,83,[91][92][93] allows to define three important design aspects: the control and modulation of the optical phase, the structuring of the absorber layer from both sides and the impact of surface textures on the electrical performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Structuring the back side normally addresses the red part of the spectrum only, since the blue and the green part of the visible spectrum are absorbed within the first few hundreds of nanometers in silicon. Therefore, patterning the absorber layer from both-sides increases the degrees of freedom available to the designer, as anti-reflective (front side) and diffractive functions (back side) can be combined [75][76][77]. However, the advantages of using the strong scattering ability of metallic back reflectors are compromised by the substantial absorption losses in the metal itself.…”

Section: The State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Schuster¹

2017

Springer Theses

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Thin-film silicon solar cells have the potential to convert sunlight into electricity at high efficiency, low cost and without generating pollutants. However, they need to become more competitive with conventional energy technologies by increasing their efficiency.One of the key efficiency limitations of using thin silicon absorber materials relates to the optical loss of low-energy photons, because the absorption coefficient of silicon decreases strongly for these low-energy photons in the red and nearinfrared, such that the absorption length becomes longer than the absorber layer thickness. If, in contrast, the incident light was redirected and trapped into the plane of the silicon slab, a thin-film could absorb as much light as a thick layer.Diffractive textures can not only efficiently scatter the low-energy photons, but are also able to suppress the reflection of the incident sunlight. In order to take advantage of the full benefits that textures can offer, I outline a simple layer transfer technique that allows the structuring of a thin-film independently from both sides, and use absorption measurements to show that structuring on both sides is favourable compared to structuring on one side only. I also introduce a figure-of-merit that can objectively and quantitatively assess the benefit of the structuring itself, which allows me to benchmark state-ofthe-art proposals and to deduce some important design rules. Minimising the parasitic losses, for example, is of critical importance, as the desired scattering properties are directly proportional to these losses. To study the impact of parasitics, I quantify the useful absorption enhancement of two different light trapping mechanisms, i.e. diffractive vs plasmonic, based on a fair and simple experimental comparison. The experiment demonstrates that diffractive light-trapping is a better choice for photovoltaic applications, because plasmonic structures accumulate the parasitical losses by multiple interactions with the trapped light.

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“…Such structure, however, relies on the concept of decoupled texturing [26], devised to suppress front reflectance and to efficiently scatter red and NIR photons. This type of structure allows thin slabs of material to achieve very high absorption values [10,26,27], but could pose severe manufacturing challenges in real devices due to the presence of very tall and steep features.…”

Section: Back Contact Design and Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Back-contacted BaSi_2 solar cells: an optical study

Vismara¹,

Isabella²,

Zeman³

2017

Opt. Express

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Abstract:We present the optical investigation of a novel back-contacted architecture for solar cells based on a thin barium (di)silicide (BaSi 2 ) absorber. First, through the analysis of absorption limits of different semiconducting materials, we show the potential of BaSi 2 for photovoltaic applications. Then, the proposed back contacted BaSi 2 solar cell design is investigated and optimized. An implied photocurrent density of 40.3 mA/cm 2 in a 1-μm thick absorber was achieved, paving the way for novel BaSi 2 -based thin-film solar cells.

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Front/Rear Decoupled Texturing in Refractive and Diffractive Regimes for Ultra-Thin Silicon-Based Solar Cells

Cited by 7 publications

References 8 publications

How to assess light trapping structures versus a Lambertian Scatterer for solar cells?

How to assess light trapping structures versus a Lambertian Scatterer for solar cells?

Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Back-contacted BaSi_2 solar cells: an optical study

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