A simulation approach for optimization of optical absorption in amorphous silicon solar cell

Abstract

One of the major drawbacks of thin-film silicon solar cells is their limited optical absorptance due to the thin absorber layer and the minimal absorption coefficient. The mechanism of using surface textured interface in layered structure is widely accepted to scatter light and enhance the optical path length, which in turn enhances the optical absorption and improves the solar cell efficiency. A textured amorphous silicon solar cell is designed in order to observe the impact of scattering layers on optical absorption and efficiency. A pyramid, cylindrical and micro lenses array structure has been simulated using simulation tool used to obtain the optimum absorption at a particular wave length. A max Power conversion efficiency of 0.0992 is obtained at Voc of 0.9218 V. In this regard, the impact of scattering layers and different geometrical structure on V-I characteristics solar cell were observed. The maximum value obtained for refractive index is 2.0 for optimized a-Si solar cell.