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Broadband absorption enhancement in a-Si:H thin-film solar cells sandwiched by pyramidal nanostructured arrays

Chuanhao Li, Liangping Xia, Hongtao Gao, Ruiying Shi, Chen Sun, Haofei Shi, and Chunlei Du

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

A new thin-film solar cell structure with a broadband absorption enhancement is proposed. The active a-Si:H film is sandwiched by two periodic pyramidal structured layers. The upper dielectric pyramidal layer acts as matching impedance by gradual change of the effective refractive index to enhance the absorption of the active layer in the short wavelength range. The lower metallic pyramidal layer traps light by the excitation of Fabry–Perot (FP) resonance, waveguide (WG) resonance and surface plasmon (SP) mode to enhance the absorption in the long wavelength range. With the cooperation of the two functional layers, a broadband absorption enhancement is realized. The structure parameters are designed by the cavity resonance theory, which shows that the results are accordant with the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation. By optimizing, the absorption of the sandwich structure is enhanced up to 48% under AM1.5G illumination in the 350–900 nm wavelength range compared to that of bare thin-film solar cells.

©2012 Optical Society of America

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Figures (4)
Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Schematic of the sandwich pyramid structure divided into two parts. The first part is the impedance-matching structure and the second part is the light-trapping structure.

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Fig. 2
Fig. 2 (a) Real and imaginary part of the a-Si:H refractive index. (b) Effective refractive index profiles along the perpendicular direction in the impedance-matching structure. Inset: cross-sectional view of the impedance-matching structure. (c) Absorption spectra with a series of P1’/P2’ in the impedance-matching structure compared to bare a-Si:H thin-film cells.

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Fig. 3
Fig. 3 (a) Absorption spectra with varying the thickness of the a-Si:H film and illumination conditions in the light-trapping structure when W4’ = P4’ = 310 nm and h4’ = 120 nm are fixed. (b) Absorption spectra with varying P4’ and illumination conditions in the light-trapping structure when W4’ = P4’, h3’ = 83.33 nm and the shape of the Ag pyramids h4’/P4’ = 12/31 are fixed. (c) Absorption spectrum of the light-trapping structure with the optimum structure parameters (red line) compared to bare a-Si:H thin-film cells (black line). Inset: cross-sectional view of the light-trapping structure. (d) Electric field distribution on a logarithmic scale in the light-trapping structure at the absorption peak C.

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Fig. 4
Fig. 4 (a) A 3D conceptual schematic of the sandwich pyramid structure. Inset: cross-sectional view of the sandwich pyramid structure. (b) Absorption spectrum of the sandwich pyramid structure, the impedance-matching structure and the light-trapping structure compared to bare a-Si:H thin-film cells.

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Equations (4)

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

N eff = ∑ i F F i ⋅ n i
2 k ⊥ h 3 � + φ 1 + φ 2 =2mπ
k // = i 2 + j 2 2π P4'
Enh= ∫ 350nm 900nm PAM1.5(λ)A2(λ)dλ ∫ 350nm 900nm PAM1.5(λ)A1(λ)dλ
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