Enhancement of the absorbance figure of merit in amorphous-silicon p-i-n solar cell by using optimized intermediate metallic layers

Abstract

In this paper, a new approach based on optimized intermediate metallic thin film engineering aspect is proposed to improve the absorption behavior for amorphous-Silicon (a-Si:H) p-i-n Solar Cell. The overall solar cell optical performance comparison between the conventional design and a proposed design including three different intermediate metallic layers (Au, Ag and Ti) is carried out numerically using accurate solutions of Maxwell’s equations. It is found that the proposed design with intermediate metallic sub-layers’ engineering provides superior integral absorption in comparison to that offered by the conventional structure. Therefore, the introduced intermediate metallic layers play a paramount role in increasing the light absorbance and modulate the electric field in the intrinsic region, where more light can be absorbed again by a-Si in the near infrared and infrared-regions using titanium as intermediate metallic layers. Furthermore, a hybrid computation based on combined numerical- metaheuristic modeling approach is proposed to boost the solar cell performance by optimizing the intermediate metallic layers. The obtained results indicate the advantage of the proposed design methodology in improving the amorphous solar cell performances.