The impact of intermediate reflectors on light absorption in tandem solar cells with randomly textured surfaces

Rockstuhl, C.; Bittkau, K.; Beckers, T.; Lederer, F.; Carius, R.

doi:10.1063/1.3142421

Journal Article

The impact of intermediate reflectors on light absorption in tandem solar cells with randomly textured surfaces

Rockstuhl, C. ; Lederer, F. ; Bittkau, K.FZJ* ; Beckers, T.FZJ* ; Carius, R.FZJ*

2009
American Institute of Physics Melville, NY

Applied physics letters 94, 211101 (2009) [10.1063/1.3142421]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/17382 doi:10.1063/1.3142421

Abstract: The impact of dielectric intermediate reflectors on the light absorption in the top cell of an a-Si:H/mu c-Si:H tandem solar cell comprising randomly textured surfaces was investigated by rigorous diffraction theory. Despite the strong light scattering, we found Fabry-Perot oscillations for the absorption with a decreasing modulation for an increasing thickness of the intermediate layer, a larger oscillation period when compared to thin films and a homogenization of the absorption profile. Optimized intermediate reflectors generate an absorption enhancement in the a-Si:H film, which varies between a factor of 2 and more than 3 for wavelengths of strong and weak absorption, respectively.

Keyword(s): J ; elemental semiconductors (auto) ; light absorption (auto) ; refractive index (auto) ; silicon (auto) ; solar cells (auto)

Classification:

Physics, Applied

Note: We acknowledge the partial financial support of this work by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant No. PAK88) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Nanovolt). We thank J. Hupkes for providing us with the samples for this study. Parts of computations were performed on the IBM p690 cluster JUMP of the JvN Forschungszentrum Julich, Germany and supported by VSR Project No. 3035.

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