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Design of antireflective nanostructures and optical coatings for next-generation multijunction photovoltaic devices

Emmett E. Perl, William E. McMahon, John E. Bowers, and Daniel J. Friedman

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

The successful development of multijunction photovoltaic devices with four or more subcells has placed additional importance on the design of high-quality broadband antireflection coatings. Antireflective nanostructures have shown promise for reducing reflection loss compared to the best thin-film interference coatings. However, material constraints make nanostructures difficult to integrate without introducing additional absorption or electrical losses. In this work, we compare the performance of various nanostructure configurations with that of an optimized multilayer antireflection coating. Transmission into a four-junction solar cell is computed for each antireflective design, and the corresponding cell efficiency is calculated. We find that the best performance is achieved with a hybrid configuration that combines nanostructures with a multilayer thin-film optical coating. This approach increases transmitted power into the top subcell by 1.3% over an optimal thin-film coating, corresponding to an increase of approximately 0.8% in the modeled cell efficiency.

© 2014 Optical Society of America

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Figures (9)
Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Diagram of the antireflective nanostructure designs explored in this paper. The top semiconductor layers are composed of a ~1 µm thick layer of indium gallium phosphide (InGaP2) and a ~20 nm thick layer of aluminum indium phosphide (AlInP2).

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Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Plot showing the reflectance spectrum for a single layer optical coating with visible maxima at D = λ/2n1 and minima at D = λ/4n1 and 3λ/4n1.

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Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Plot showing the refractive index (solid lines) and extinction coefficient (dashed lines) for the top two layers of a typical multijunction cell (InGaP2 and AlInP2) and common materials used for thin-film antireflection coatings (TiO2, Ta2O5, and SiO2). The dash-dotted black lines show the ideal refractive indices for a 3-layer step-down interference coating.

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Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Plot showing the reflectance spectrum for 1000 nm tall AlInP2 nanostructures. The calculation begins to converge when the number of slices is greater than 20.

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Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Plots showing reflectance as a function of wavelength for (a) SiO2 nanostructures placed on top of a SiO2 substrate and (b) AlInP2 nanostructures placed on top of an AlInP2 substrate. The nanostructure height is varied from 0 to 1000 nm.

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Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Plot showing the cumulative height of the multilayer ARC for the hybrid configuration (Case 3) as a function of nanostructure height.

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Fig. 7
Fig. 7 Plots showing transmitted, absorbed, and reflected power for (a) Case 1 - AlInP2 nanostructures, (b) Case 2 – TiO2 nanostructures, (c) Case 3 – The hybrid ARC design. (d) Plot showing absorption for the materials used in the nanostructure designs.

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Fig. 8
Fig. 8 Plots showing the sum of reflection and absorption losses as a function of wavelength for the best configuration from Cases 1, 2, and 3. The percentage of power lost in the top subcell is shown in the box on the top right of the plot.

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Fig. 9
Fig. 9 Correlation between AM1.5D power loss and modeled cell efficiency at 1000 suns concentration. The two solid lines show linear fits to the data. The dashed line shows where the linear correlation between cell efficiency and power loss breaks down due to undersupply of photons to the top subcell.

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Tables (1)

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Table 1 Antireflection Coating Comparison

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Equations (5)

Equations on this page are rendered with MathJax. Learn more.

F= ∫ λ min λ max P(λ)*[1−T(λ)]dλ .
sin( θ T )= m λ 0 nd +sin( θ I ).
d AlIn P 2 d Si O 2 = d Si O 2 d AlIn P 2 ≈ 1 2 .
S λ = H*n λ 0 * (# of slices) .
Absorption Loss=1− e (−4πkD/λ) .
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