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Light‐Trapping Front Textures for Solar Cells from Tailored Mixtures of Nanospheres: A Numerical Study
Author(s) -
Nanz Stefan,
Abass Aimi,
Piechulla Peter M.,
Sprafke Alexander,
Wehrspohn Ralf B.,
Rockstuhl Carsten
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.201800699
Subject(s) - materials science , silicon , optics , texture (cosmology) , reflection (computer programming) , optoelectronics , scattering , fabrication , substrate (aquarium) , absorption (acoustics) , crystalline silicon , oblique case , plasmonic solar cell , solar cell , surface finish , monocrystalline silicon , computer science , composite material , image (mathematics) , physics , medicine , linguistics , oceanography , alternative medicine , philosophy , pathology , artificial intelligence , programming language , geology
Highly efficient anti‐reflection textures for solar cells that allow a fabrication using a two‐step bottom‐up approach are reported. Hereby, nanospheres of tailored sizes are deposited as a monolayer on a substrate and the resulting height profile is used as a template for structuring the silicon surface. By applying these textures to crystalline silicon solar cells, it is numerically shown that such interfaces provide excellent broadband suppression of reflection while also enhancing the effective path‐length through oblique‐angle scattering into the medium. Reflectance values around 5% can be reached and sustained for incident angles up to 40°. The short‐circuit current density obtained with the disordered texture and assuming two‐pass absorption in 10 µm thick crystalline silicon reaches 25.3 mA cm −2 , which is close to the corresponding value achievable with a Lambertian texture (27.9 mA cm −2 ). Considering the simplicity and low cost of the approach, these textures may serve as a promising alternative to other often used anti‐reflection textures, especially for large‐scale devices.