Light Propagation in Flexible Thin-Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells with Nanotextured Metal Back Reflectors

Abstract

Nanostructured metal back reflectors (BRs) are playing an important role in thin-film solar cells, which facilitates an increased optical path length within a relatively thin absorbing layer. In this study, three nanotextured plasmonic metal (copper, gold, and silver) BRs underneath flexible thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells are systematically investigated. The solar cells with BRs demonstrate an excellent light harvesting capability in the long-wavelength region. With the combination of hybrid cavity resonances, horizontal modes, and surface plasmonic resonances, more incident light is coupled into the photoactive layer. Compared to the reference cells, the three devices with plasmonic BRs show lower parasitic absorptions with different individual absorption distributions. Both experimental and simulated results indicate that the silver BR cells delivered the best performance with a promising power conversion efficiency of 7.26%. These rational designs of light harvesting nanostructures provide guidelines for high-performance thin-film solar cells and other optoelectronic devices.

The Use of Anodic Oxides in Practical and Sustainable Devices for Energy Conversion and Storage

“…Among solar cells based on silicon technology, recent studies involving the anodic oxides aimed to improve the PV performance by enhancing the optical and plasmon absorption properties of metallic nanoparticles in the antireflective layers [25,66,92]. In some investigations, the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) masks worked as a template for the deposition of plasmonic nanoparticles such as silver, indium, and gold [25,66].…”

“…Cao et al [92] applied the anodization technique to produce a honeycomb-textured Ti substrate to deposit Cu, Au, and Ag as back reflectors. Like the AAO template, the Ti substrate is not part of the active layer but acted as support for metallic NPs.…”

“…Due to the chemical stability, metallic oxides produced by several methods have been explored as photoanodes. Regarding those prepared via anodization, the technique provides the advantage of the fabrication of high ordered nanostructure with a large surface area ideal for charge transfer and transport and the absorption and desorption of reactive species [92]. According to Chiarello et al [61], the ordered structure can confer to the oxide photonic crystal properties, allowing confine and control photons, increasing light-harvesting and absorption efficiency.…”

Extinction Coefficient Modulation of MoO3 Films Doped with Plasmonic Nanoparticles: From an Effective Medium Theory Description

“…Particularly, the use of solar radiation has attracted the greatest interest in the theoretical area, as well as in the design and development of solar devices like photovoltaic systems, or solar collectors [ 2 ]. In solar cells applications, there are a large number of solar cell types such as silicon, amorphous silicon, chalcogenides, and perovskites, to name just a few [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. These types of solar cells have been studied as single-junction and multiple-junction or tandem [ 7 ].…”

Design and Simulation of a‐Si:H/PbS Colloidal Quantum Dots Monolithic Tandem Solar Cell for 12% Efficiency

“…The “flexible” concept is claimed on the basis of experimentally available data which showed that both top and bottom subcells are flexible. [ 41–47 ] Tandem device reported in current work using two different appropriate bandgap absorber materials, i.e., a‐Si:H/PbS CQD is not originated in research, yet. All the simulations in this research work are performed using the Silvaco ATLAS TCAD simulator.…”