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Abstract

Crystalline Silicon (C-Si) is the industrially dominant component in most solar cell manufacturing due to its non-toxicity at high level material control, natural abundance, high carrier mobility, and industry compatibility [1][2][3]. Similar to any photovoltaic technology, increasing the efficiency and reducing the cost are of prime interest. Reducing the cost involves using less material by developing thinner wafers and enhancing the efficiency and cost of the manufacturing processes. It also includes reducing the cost of the solar system including the antireflective layers and the tracking system. However, the PV industry based on C-Si is limited due to high cost fabrication for large scale applications and high reflection losses which limit their efficiency and their use [4][5][6][7]. Possible solutions are using AR coatings to suppress reflection and high aspect ratio nanostructures to increase absorption by increasing the optical path of photon [2,8,9]. However, most common AR coatings are limited in use due to their chemical, thermal and mechanical instability with the thin film and their validity only for certain wavelengths and certain incident angles [2,9]. The limitation of the traditional AR coatings for certain wavelength and angle range such as using SiNx layer as AR coating on silicon based solar cells reduced the reflection from 40% to 6% only with normal incidence, is very common problem [9]. Therefore, using AR coatings for wide wavelengths and angles range is inefficient, requires high cost for multilayer use and for a mechanical tracking system to follow the solar radiation at different angles [2,9]. In the last few years, Black Silicon (B-Si) paved the way not only for highly efficient Si solar cells but also for a wide range of applications