SIMULATION OF LIGHT IN-COUPLING AT OBLIQUE ANGLES IN THIN-FILM SILICON SOLAR CELLS

The conversion efficiency of thin-film silicon solar cells is significant affected by their nanostructure. The established methods to simulate thin-film solar cells are usually for perpendicular incident waves, only. However, real outdoor conditions often lead to oblique incident sunlight. Hence, the structure of the solar cell must be optimized, to obtain a high efficiency for oblique incident angles. It is well-known that a periodic pyramidal geometry of the interfaces leads to a high quantum efficiency. Therefore, we perform 3-dimensional simulations of thin-film silicon solar cells with a pyramidal structure. To this end a simulation tool based on the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method for solving Maxwell's equations is developed. Parallel computations on high performance computers are needed to meet the large computational requirements.