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Approaching the Lambertian limit in randomly textured thin-film solar cells

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Abstract

The Lambertian limit for solar cells is a benchmark for evaluating their efficiency. It has been shown that the performance of either extremely thick or extremely thin solar cells can be driven close to this limit by using an appropriate photon management. Here we show that this is likewise possible for realistic, practically relevant thin-film solar cells based on amorphous silicon. Most importantly, we achieve this goal by relying on random textures already incorporated into state-of-the-art superstrates; with the only subtlety that their topology has to be downscaled to typical feature sizes of about 100 nm.

©2011 Optical Society of America

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Figures (6)

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 (a) Three-dimensional schematic of the solar cell under consideration. A 250 nm thick aSi:H-layer is conformally deposited between textured ZnO. The cell is finalized by a glass superstrate at the top and a perfect reflector at the bottom. Topographies in nm of the investigated textures correspond to superstrates fabricated in Neuchâtel (b), at Asahi (c) and in Jülich (d). The blue scale bars represent 1 μm.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Absorptance spectra of the considered solar cell for varying lateral scaling factors f scal.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Absorptance at several wavelengths versus the lateral scaling factor.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Short circuit current density of the considered solar cell for varying lateral scaling factors f scal. The black horizontal line depicts the Lambertian limit for a reflection loss of 2.0%.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Short circuit current density of the considered solar cell for a varying modulation height of the texture. The black horizontal line depicts the Lambertian limit for a reflection loss at the glass/ZnO-interface of ≈2.0%.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 Calculated absorptance spectra for optimized lateral scaling factors for the different superstrates. The black curve depicts the Lambertian limit assuming a reflection loss at the glass/ZnO-interface of ≈2.0%. The dotted curves are calculated for the unscaled textures.

Tables (1)

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Table 1 Parameters of Optimized Textures Discussed in this Paper

Equations (1)

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A ( λ ) = 0.98 ( 1 exp [ 4 α ( λ ) d ] ) 1 [ 1 1.5 2 / n ( λ ) 2 ] exp [ 4 α ( λ ) d ] ,
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