Silicon periodic nanostructures for high efficiency absorption in thin film solar cells

Enhancing the light absorption in ultrathin-film silicon solar cells is important for improving efficiency and reducing cost. In this paper, we report a highly effecient cosine periodic nanostructure as light trapping texture. The design and fabrication as well as measurement of cosine nanotextures were presented. The optimized structure yields an average reflectance of 7.07% at an equivalent silicon thickness of 10μm, much better than planar and random pyramid structures. The measurements demonstrate that the absorptions in ultrathin film solar cells are very close to the Yablonovitch limit for the entire solar spectrum and insensitive to the angle of the light. This approach is applicable to various thicknesses and promising in future glass-based thin film solar cells.