Open AccessSimulations of sinusoidal nanotextures for coupling light into c-Si thin-film solar cells
Author(s) -
Klaus Jäger,
Carlo Barth,
Martin Hammerschmidt,
Sven Herrmann,
Sven Burger,
Frank Schmidt,
Christiane Becker
Publication year - 2016
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.24.00a569
Subject(s) - anti reflective coating , materials science , stack (abstract data type) , silicon nitride , photocurrent , optics , thin film , silicon , coupling (piping) , phase (matter) , optoelectronics , layer (electronics) , refractive index , physics , nanotechnology , quantum mechanics , computer science , metallurgy , programming language
We numerically study coupling of light into silicon (Si) on glass using different square and hexagonal sinusoidal nanotextures. After describing sinusoidal nanotextures mathematically, we investigate how their design affects coupling of light into Si using a rigorous solver of Maxwell's equations. We discuss nanotextures with periods between 350 nm and 1050 nm and aspect ratios up to 0.5. The maximally observed gain in the maximal achievable photocurrent density coupled into the Si absorber is 7.0 mA/cm 2 and 3.6 mA/cm 2 for a layer stack without and with additional antireflective silicon nitride layers, respectively. A promising application is the use as smooth anti-reflective coatings in liquid-phase crystallized Si thin-film solar cells.