Light trapping in horizontally aligned silicon microwire solar cells

In this study, we demonstrate a solar cell design based on horizontally aligned microwires fabricated from 99.98% pure silicon via the molten core fiber drawing method. A similar structure consisting of 50 μm diameter close packed wires (≈ 0.97 packing density) on a Lambertian white back-reflector showed 86 % absorption for incident light of wavelengths up to 850 nm. An array with a packing fraction of 0.35 showed an absorption of 58 % over the same range, demonstrating the potential for effective light trapping. Prototype solar cells were fabricated to demonstrate the concept. Horizontal wire cells offer several advantages as they can be flexible, and partially transparent, and absorb light efficiently over a wide range of incident angles.