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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Journal ArticleDOI
Combining randomly textured surfaces and photonic crystals for the photon management in thin film microcrystalline silicon solar cells
TL;DR: This work presents a photon management scheme that combines the benefits of a randomly textured surface and an opaline photonic crystal and shows that a structure that respects the mutual fabrication constraints has the best performance.
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Experimental Demonstration of Quasi-Resonant Absorption in Silicon Thin Films for Enhanced Solar Light Trapping
TL;DR: In this article, the authors experimentally demonstrate that the addition of partial lattice disorder to a thin-film micro-crystalline silicon photonic crystal results in the controlled spectral broadening of its absorption peaks to form quasi resonances; increasing light trapping over a wide bandwidth while also reducing sensitivity to the angle of incident radiation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Experimental Demonstration of Quasi-resonant Absorption in Silicon Thin Films for Enhanced Solar Light Trapping
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors experimentally demonstrate that the addition of partial lattice disorder to a thin-film microcrystalline silicon photonic crystal results in the controlled spectral broadening of its absorption peaks to form quasi resonances: increasing light trapping over a wide bandwidth while also reducing sensitivity to the angle of incident radiation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Enhancement of solar cells with photonic and plasmonic crystals - overcoming the Lambertian limit
TL;DR: In this paper, a class of conformal solar cells with nanocone back reflectors with absorption at the Lambertian 4n2 limit, averaged over the “entire” wave length range for hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) thin-film solar cells.