Open AccessDesign, fabrication and optical characterization of photonic crystal assisted thin film monocrystalline-silicon solar cells
Author(s) -
Xianqin Meng,
Valérie Depauw,
Guillaume Gomard,
Ounsi El Daïf,
Christos Trompoukis,
Emmanuel Drouard,
Cécile Jamois,
Alain Fave,
Frédéric Dross,
Ivan Gordon,
Christian Seassal
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.20.00a465
Subject(s) - monocrystalline silicon , materials science , optoelectronics , crystalline silicon , silicon , optics , etching (microfabrication) , photonic crystal , solar cell , stack (abstract data type) , reactive ion etching , absorption (acoustics) , thin film , layer (electronics) , nanotechnology , composite material , programming language , physics , computer science
In this paper, we present the integration of an absorbing photonic crystal within a monocrystalline silicon thin film photovoltaic stack fabricated without epitaxy. Finite difference time domain optical simulations are performed in order to design one- and two-dimensional photonic crystals to assist crystalline silicon solar cells. The simulations show that the 1D and 2D patterned solar cell stacks would have an increased integrated absorption in the crystalline silicon layer would increase of respectively 38% and 50%, when compared to a similar but unpatterned stack, in the whole wavelength range between 300 nm and 1100 nm. In order to fabricate such patterned stacks, we developed an effective set of processes based on laser holographic lithography, reactive ion etching and inductively coupled plasma etching. Optical measurements performed on the patterned stacks highlight the significant absorption increase achieved in the whole wavelength range of interest, as expected by simulation. Moreover, we show that with this design, the angle of incidence has almost no influence on the absorption for angles as high as around 60°.