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Abstract
A directionally selective multilayer filter is applied to a hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cell to improve the light trapping. The filter prevents non-absorbed long-wavelength photons from leaving the cell under oblique angles leading to an enhancement of the total optical path length for weakly absorbed light within the device by a factor of kappa(r) = 3.5. Parasitic absorption in the contact layers limits the effective path length improvement for the photovoltaic quantum efficiency to a factor of kappa(EQE) = 1.5. The total short-circuit current density increases by DeltaJ(sc) = 0.2 mAcm(-2) due to the directional selectivity of the Bragg-like filter.
Highlights
Solar cells offer a promising way to turn the light energy that the sun provides into electricity
With a thickness of a few microns or less, thin-film solar cells do not support traditional light-trapping techniques, such as the surface texturing extensively used in wafer-based silicon solar cells
We have used computer simulations to show that silver (Ag) nanoparticles can resonantly couple with the incident light and scatter more light into the active region
Summary
Incorporating nanoparticles made of dielectric rather than plasmonic materials reduces parasitic absorption and results in more efficient silicon photovoltaics. Research centers on three main points, including reducing semiconductor material by adopting thinner silicon photoactive regions, reducing manufacturing energy and time by implementing advanced silicon-processing techniques, and raising the efficiency of these thin-film cells through innovative light-trapping techniques. Oscillations in the nanoparticles are in phase) and scatter more light into the active region This is because the plasmon frequencies, at which Ag nanoparticles are resonantly excited to form strong electron-density oscillations, lie within the solar spectrum. The nanoparticles exhibit very high absorption of incident light at these plasmon-resonance frequencies. This parasitic absorption can be significantly reduced for large nanoparticles,[1] it limits the effectiveness of Ag nanoparticles to improve light absorption in the silicon layer.[2]. We considered[2] a simple thin-film silicon solar-cell model with a 240nm-thick
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