Discussion
Broadband light harvesting enhancement with front double
and back metallic gratings in thin film solar cells
Wei Zhang, Liyong Jiang, Xiangyin Li
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Department of Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
article info
Article history:
Received 6 July 2013
Received in revised form
5 December 2013
Accepted 9 December 2013
Available online 23 December 2013
Keywords:
Grating effect
Surface plasmon polaritons
Light harvesting
abstract
In this paper, a-Si based thin film solar cells combined with front double dielectric and back triangle
metallic gratings are proposed to enhance light harvesting in broadband wave range and wide-angle
incident. The grating diffraction effect of front dual dielectric gratings and surface plasmon polaritons
(SPPs) induced by back metal gratings promote the total optical absorption. We achieve 93.7% light
absorption in TM incident and 91.4% average harvesting (on TE and TM hybrid mode) by the optimized
structure in the spectrum range from 300 to 800 nm, about 20% enhancement. And the short circuit
photocurrent density is up to 22.4 mA/cm
2
with 10% increase.
& 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
As the shortage of natural resource, solar energy is becoming more
and more important to human beings. Solar cells ar e the most potential
photo voltaic devices for solar light utilization. At present, a-Si based
active lay er still accounts for most part in solar cell industrial production
as the material is abundantly stored and convenient to get. However ,
the high cost and low photoelectric conversion efficiency would also
block the process of universalness. How to decrease the cost meanwhile
increase the effici ency is decisive to develop the solar cell industry.
Fr om the earlier resear ch, we find that the cost is efficientl y down by
reducing the thickness of a-Si active lay er which would cut down the
material utilization amount. It is the most direct and efficient way to
lower the cost, meanwhile, thin active lay er also improves the photo-
carrier collection efficiency . N everth eless, too thin acti ve lay er also
decrease the light absorbing ability and a majori ty of light escaped from
thin film solar cells before being absorbed as a result of the low
absorption coefficient of a-Si in the visible and infrared range [1].
Therefore, light trapping structure is necessary in thin film solar cells t o
enhance the solar light harvesting. Light trapping contains two aspects,
reduce the reflection on the surface and lengthen the propagating path
inside the active layer, ensure light would be absorbed completely [2].In
the industrial production, quart er -wa velength transparent thin films are
used for antireflection coatings in thin film solar cells [3]. But the
disadvantage of this method is that the designed structures only
suppress reflection at a specific wavelength and incident angle. Then
subw avelength gratings was noticed by people as broadband and
omnidirectio nal antireflections owe to the grating diffraction effect
[4–6].What
0
s more, gratings could be put on both the front and back
side [7] and 1D simple grating is technology mature in industrial
production nowadays. 2D photo nic crystals structures were also pro-
posed in rec ent years [8,9]. This approach is highly promising, but it
would not be larg e-scale applied in industrial production within a short
time due to the limitation of severe technological challenges. Thus,
balanced the absorption efficiency and technical challenges, we intro-
duced a new light trapping structure combined front 1D dual-grating
andbacktrianglemetallicreflector, different from the structure in Ref.
[7] which has the single gratings in top surface and rectangle metallic
gratings back side. Meanwhile the back periodical structure on the
interface of metal and dielectric layer would induce surface plasmon
polaritons (SPPs) effect. SPPs has been researched for years on many
potentia l applications, such as the use to enhance the absorp tion
improv e the high power of SLED [1 0,11]. Otherwise, it would also
increase the visible and near-infrared absorption in nanostructures,
which is necessary in our research [12–14]. The whole structure we
designed is viable to be fabricated now adays. Anodic o xidation process
is helpful for the back metallic corrosion and pulsed laser deposition
method and electron-beam lithographyiseffectivefortheactivelayer
and top surface structure building. Rigorous coupled-wav e analysis
(RCWA) and finite difference time domain (FDTD) methods are used for
numerical calculations here.
2. Principles and methods
2.1. Design principles
The most important function of front dielectric gratings is to reduce
the reflection on ITO-a-Si interface and extend the optical path length
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Optics Communications
0030-4018/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2013.12.026
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Corresponding author.
E-mail address: opticZhang@126.com (X. Li).
Optics Communications 317 (2014) 83–87