Comparison of Light Trapping in Silicon Nanowire and Surface Textured Thin-Film Solar Cells

Abstract

Abstract:The optics of axial silicon nanowire solar cells is investigated and compared to silicon thin-film solar cells with textured contact layers. The quantum efficiency and short circuit current density are calculated taking a device geometry into account, which can be fabricated by using standard semiconductor processing. The solar cells with textured absorber and textured contact layers provide a gain of short circuit current density of 4.4 mA/cm 2 and 6.1 mA/cm 2 compared to a solar cell on a flat substrate, respectively. The influence of the device dimensions on the quantum efficiency and short circuit current density will be discussed.

A study of electromagnetic light propagation in a perovskite-based solar cell via a computational modelling approach

“…Figure 6 shows that the contribution of charge carrier generation in the photoactive perovskite layer is considerably higher. This observation is reasonable since typically front contact, back metal contact, p-layer and n-layer do not contribute significantly to the charge carrier generation [23]. Furthermore, as previously observed in figures 4 and 5, at short wavelengths, the electric field and absorbed optical power exhibit significantly small magnitudes in the bottom region of the perovskite layer, which shows that mostly the charge carriers are generated in the top region of the photoactive layer.…”

“…However, it is noteworthy that this technique may only be used whenever the geometrical size of the photoactive layer is much larger than the optical wavelength. For thin film solar cells, where the film thickness becomes comparable or smaller than the wavelength of light [21], light propagation cannot be adequately modelled by ray tracing and instead it is necessary to rigorously solve Maxwell's equations [22][23][24]. Therefore, numerical simulations capable of solving the Maxwell's equations and semiconductor equations (Poisson, continuity and drift-diffusion equations) are routinely performed to develop an understanding regarding the optoelectronic properties of solar cells [25,26].…”

Approaching Perfect Light Incoupling in Perovskite and Silicon Thin Film Solar Cells by Moth Eye Surface Textures

“…[43] This assumption provides a good approximation of the experimental results if the thickness of the absorber is smaller than the charge carrier diffusion lengths, where this is the case for both material systems. The electromagnetic field distributions and the time-averaged power loss distributions are calculated.…”

“…The electromagnetic field distributions and the time-averaged power loss distributions are calculated. [43,44] The simulations are carried out for an incident wave with an amplitude of 1 V m −1 and a spectral range from 300 to 800 nm. It is assumed that the quantum efficiency of the solar cell is equal to the absorption of the perovskite layer and the i-layer of the amorphous silicon solar cell and that, hence, the calculated quantum efficiency represents an upper limit.…”

Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells: From Detailed Balance Limit Calculations to Photon Management

“…Based on the electric field distribution the power density and the short-circuit current is calculated. Details on the calculation are provided in the literature [95][96][97]. It is assumed that only the electron/hole pairs absorbed by the absorber layers of the solar cell contribute to the quantum efficiency and the short-circuit current density.…”