Textured conducting glass by nanosphere lithography for increased light absorption in thin-film solar cells

Abstract

Nanoscale surface texturing in thin-film solar cells has been shown to enhance device efficiency by increasing light absorption through reduced reflectance and increased light scattering across a broad range of wavelengths and angles. However, light trapping in the industrial thin-film cells is still sub-optimal and creating optimized nanoscale texture over a large area remains challenging. In this article, we present a well-controlled low-cost process to fabricate a periodic nanocone texture optimized for maximum light absorption in thin-film microcrystalline silicon solar cells. The texture is fabricated using nanosphere lithography with the period controlled by the nanosphere diameter and the texture shape and aspect ratio controlled by the reactive ion etching conditions. Finite-difference time-domain optical simulations are used to optimize the texture in the state-of-the-art microcrystalline cells, and optical absorption measurements show that the same cells fabricated on the optimized nanocone-textured substrates exhibit a relative short-circuit current increase of close to 30% compared to a reference state-of-the-art cell with a randomly textured zinc oxide layer. This nanocone texturing technique is compatible with standard thin-film cell fabrication processes and can also be used for other thin-film cells (CIGS, CdTe, CZTS, etc) to maximize light absorption and minimize layer thickness enabling more efficient carrier collection and lower overall cost.