Sunlight loss for femtosecond microstructured silicon with two impurity bands

Abstract

Black silicon, produced by irradiating the surface of a silicon wafer with femtosecond laser pulses in the presence of a sulfur-bearing gas, is widely believed to be a potential material for efficient multi-intermediate-band silicon solar cells. Taking chalcogen as an example, we analyse the loss of sunlight for silicon with two impurity bands and we find that loss of the sunlight can be minimized to 0.332 when Te0(0.307 eV) and Te+(0.411 eV) are doped into microstructured silicon. Finally, problems needed to be resolved in analysing the relationship between conversion efficiency of the ideal four-band silicon solar cell and the position of the introduced two intermediated bands in silicon according to detailed balance theory are pointed out with great emphasis.