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Abstract
We investigated the light coupling to waveguide modes in nanophotonic thin-film solar cells exhibiting a tailored disordered grating texture by rigorous optical simulations. Such disordered nanophotonic light trapping concepts have demonstrated enhanced short-circuit current density compared to ordered nanophotonic thin-film solar cells. This observation is commonly explained by a spectral broadening of the resonant light coupling to waveguide modes. In this work, we investigated the origin of this spectral broadening. We identified two basic mechanisms that lead to a spectral broadening of the light coupling to waveguide modes: (1) the broadening of the wave vector transferred by the disordered interface texture and (2) the broadening of the waveguide mode due to the distortion of the wave guiding absorber layer. Depending on the type of disorder, the contribution from each of the mechanisms varies.
Highlights
Advanced light-trapping concepts are one way to enhance light absorption in the absorber layer and thereby improve solar cell efficiencies
We investigate the impact of disordered grating textures on the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of solar cells by applying the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method [10,11]
We investigated the physical mechanism of the spectrally broad light coupling to waveguide modesWe in thin-film solarthe cells by disordered grating textures at thebroad interfaces the absorber layer by investigated physical mechanism of the spectrally lightofcoupling to waveguide rigorous optical simulations with
Summary
Advanced light-trapping concepts are one way to enhance light absorption in the absorber layer and thereby improve solar cell efficiencies. This holds in particular for thin absorber layers, where the thickness of the device gets similar to or smaller than the absorption length of impinging light in a broad spectral range. In such thin devices, the resonant coupling to waveguide modes is of utmost importance [1]. Due to the missing optical resonance, this improvement remains below the values for solar cells with periodic textures at their resonances [8]
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