Nanostructures for highly efficient ultra-thin silicon solar cells

Abstract

As the demand of time is cost reduction of solar photovoltaic power generation by reducing the active material usage, the unique micro-nanostructure geometry reported can effectively achieve this goal by reducing approximately 50% material usage. Analysis and optimization of the nanostructured geometry is presented in this work. The results are also compared with conventional textured silicon solar cell. It has been found that the reflection reduces significantly with the use of optimized nanostructured geometry. The challenge of trapping light within ultra-thin silicon solar cell has been addressed effectively by the implementation of optimized micro-nanostructured geometry. Simulations are done on both wave optics and ray optics module of comsol multiphysics to optically optimize the nanostructured geometry. It is expected that this micro-nanostructured silicon solar cell can achieve the Shockley-Queiesser limit within an ultra-thin absorber and thus will be able to reduce the material usage leading to low cost power conversion of solar photovoltaic technology.