Improving thin-film crystalline silicon solar cell efficiencies with photonic crystals.

نویسندگان

  • Peter Bermel
  • Chiyan Luo
  • Lirong Zeng
  • Lionel C Kimerling
  • John D Joannopoulos
چکیده

Most photovoltaic (solar) cells are made from crystalline silicon (c-Si), which has an indirect band gap. This gives rise to weak absorption of one-third of usable solar photons. Therefore, improved light trapping schemes are needed, particularly for c-Si thin film solar cells. Here, a photonic crystal-based light-trapping approach is analyzed and compared to previous approaches. For a solar cell made of a 2 mum thin film of c-Si and a 6 bilayer distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) in the back, power generation can be enhanced by a relative amount of 24.0% by adding a 1D grating, 26.3% by replacing the DBR with a six-period triangular photonic crystal made of air holes in silicon, 31.3% by a DBR plus 2D grating, and 26.5% by replacing it with an eight-period inverse opal photonic crystal.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Silicon Solar Cell Light-Trapping Using Defect Mode Photonic Crystals

Nanostructured active or absorbing layers of solar cells, including photonic crystals and wire arrays, have been increasingly explored as potential options to enhance performance of thin film solar cells because of their unique ability to control light. We show that 2D photonic crystals can improve light trapping by an enhanced density of optical states and improved incoupling, and demonstrate,...

متن کامل

Design of Silicon Nano-Bars Anti-Reflection Coating to Enhance Thin Film Solar Cells Efficiency

In this paper a novel anti-reflection (AR) coating based on silicon nano-bars is designed and its impact on the performance of crystalline silicon (c-Si) thin-film solar cells is extensively studied. Silicon nano-bars with optimized size and period are embedded on top of the active layer, under a 100nm Si3N4 layer. As a result of the proposed layer stack, an inhomogeneous intermediate layer wit...

متن کامل

Photonic Systems for Crystalline Silicon and Thin-Film Photovoltaic Manufacturing

In this chapter, we will discuss the impact that photonics have on photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing. The broad field of photonics is now commonly thought to encompass classical optics (Hecht, 2001), nanophotonics (Joannopoulos et al., 2007), and metamaterials (Cai and Shalaev, 2009). Over the last few decades, photonic technology has become an increasingly integral part of PV manufacturing, both...

متن کامل

Nano-Photonic Structures for Light Trapping in Ultra-Thin Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Thick wafer-silicon is the dominant solar cell technology. It is of great interest to develop ultra-thin solar cells that can reduce materials usage, but still achieve acceptable performance and high solar absorption. Accordingly, we developed a highly absorbing ultra-thin crystalline Si based solar cell architecture using periodically patterned front and rear dielectric nanocone arrays which p...

متن کامل

Epitaxial Thin Film Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells on low Cost Silicon Carriers

In order to substantially reduce the costs of present crystalline Si solar cells, the material consumption of highly pure Si in a typical solar cell structure should be reduced. Most of the crystalline Si material merely acts as a mechanical carrier for the solar cell device with most of the optical absorption taking place in the upper 30μm region. When special care is taken to maximize optical...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Optics express

دوره 15 25  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007