Photonic crystal microcrystalline silicon solar cells
Yoshinori Tanaka,Kenji Ishizaki,Menaka De Zoysa,Takami Umeda,Yosuke Kawamoto,Shoya Fujita,Susumu Noda +6 more
TLDR
In this paper, a method to incorporate photonic crystal structures into thin-film microcrystalline silicon photovoltaic layers while suppressing undesired defects formed in the microcrystaline silicon was proposed.Abstract:
Enhancing the absorption of thin-film microcrystalline silicon solar cells over a broadband range in order to improve the energy conversion efficiency is a very important challenge in the development of low cost and stable solar energy harvesting. Here, we demonstrate that a broadband enhancement of the absorption can be achieved by creating a large number of resonant modes associated with two-dimensional photonic crystal band edges. We utilize higher-order optical modes perpendicular to the silicon layer, as well as the band-folding effect by employing photonic crystal superlattice structures. We establish a method to incorporate photonic crystal structures into thin-film (~500 nm) microcrystalline silicon photovoltaic layers while suppressing undesired defects formed in the microcrystalline silicon. The fabricated solar cells exhibit 1.3 times increase of a short circuit current density (from 15.0 mA/cm2 to 19.6 mA/cm2) by introducing the photonic crystal structure, and consequently the conversion efficiency increases from 5.6% to 6.8%. Moreover, we theoretically analyze the absorption characteristics in the fabricated cell structure, and reveal that the energy conversion efficiency can be increased beyond 9.5% in a structure less than 1/400 as thick as conventional crystalline silicon solar cells with an efficiency of 24%. © 2015 The Authors. Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Silicon solar cells: toward the efficiency limits
TL;DR: The photovoltaic conversion of solar energy starts to give an appreciable contribution to power generation in many countries, with more than 90% of the global PV market relying on solar cells base.
Journal ArticleDOI
Broadband absorption enhancement in plasmonic nanoshells-based ultrathin microcrystalline-Si solar cells
Waseem Raja,Waseem Raja,Angelo Bozzola,Pierfrancesco Zilio,Ermanno Miele,Simone Panaro,Hai Wang,Andrea Toma,Alessandro Alabastri,Alessandro Alabastri,Francesco De Angelis,Remo Proietti Zaccaria,Remo Proietti Zaccaria +12 more
TL;DR: The role of plasmonic nanoshells, embedded within a ultrathin microcrystalline silicon solar cell, in enhancing broadband light trapping capability of the cell and, at the same time, to reduce the parasitic loss is investigated.
Journal ArticleDOI
Efficiency improvement of a silicon-based thin-film solar cell using plasmonic silver nanoparticles and an antireflective layer
TL;DR: In this paper, a silicon thin-film solar cell (TFSC) integrated with the silver nanoparticles is presented, which consists of anti-reflection, absorption and reflective layers in which the anti-reflective layer is made of pyramids of TiO2.
Journal ArticleDOI
Improved efficiency of ultra-thin µc-Si solar cells with photonic-crystal structures.
TL;DR: This work investigates the improvement of the conversion efficiency of ultra-thin microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si) solar cells incorporating photonic-crystal structures, where light absorption is strongly enhanced by the multiple resonant modes in the photonic crystal.
Journal ArticleDOI
A light-trapping strategy for nanocrystalline silicon thin-film solar cells using three-dimensionally assembled nanoparticle structures.
Kyungyeon Ha,Eunseok Jang,Segeun Jang,Jong-Kwon Lee,Min Seok Jang,Hoseop Choi,Jun-Sik Cho,Mansoo Choi +7 more
TL;DR: The multiple plasmon resonances, together with the antireflection functionality arising from the conformally deposited top surface of the 3D solar cell, lead to a 22% and an 11% improvement in power conversion efficiency of the nc-Si:H thin-film solar cells compared to flat cells and cells employing nanoparticle clusters, respectively.
References
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Nano-crystalline silicon solar cell architecture with absorption at the classical 4n 2 limit
Rana Biswas,Chun Xu +1 more
TL;DR: A periodically patterned conformal photonic-plasmonic crystal based solar architecture for a nano-crystalline silicon solar cell, through rigorous scattering matrix simulations, which shows good absorption and maximal current results.
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Microcrystalline Silicon Solar Cells with 10.5% Efficiency Realized by Improved Photon Absorption via Periodic Textures and Highly Transparent Conductive Oxide
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed advanced light management techniques and applied them to single-junction microcrystalline silicon solar cells to improve their current density and conversion efficiency, achieving a high short-circuit current density of 30.8 mA/cm2 in a 3µm-thick cell aided by the superior light-trapping effect of periodically textured back reflectors, and by the reduced absorption loss from the highmobility transparent conductive oxide films.
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Coupled optical and electrical modeling of solar cell based on conical pore silicon photonic crystals
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared the efficiency of thin film photonic crystal solar cells consisting of conical pores and nanowires and found that using only 1 µm of silicon, sculpted in the form of an inverted slanted conical pore PV film, and using standard contact recombination velocities, solar power conversion efficiency of 17.5% is obtained when the carrier diffusion length exceeds 10 µm.
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Enhancement of broadband optical absorption in photovoltaic devices by band-edge effect of photonic crystals
TL;DR: It is shown that multiple photonic band-edge modes can be produced by higher order modes in the vertical direction of the Si photovoltaic layer, which can enhance the absorption on multiple wavelengths.
Journal ArticleDOI
Green Photoluminescence from GaInN Photonic Crystals
Hitoshi Kitagawa,Hitoshi Kitagawa,Toshihide Suto,Toshihide Suto,Masayuki Fujita,Yoshinori Tanaka,Takashi Asano,Susumu Noda +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated green-emitting GaInN two-dimensional photonic crystals with air holes that penetrate through the active layer and observed photoluminescence intensity from the photonic crystal is approximately three times that of a sample with no photonic structure.