Title
Smooth anti-reflective three-dimensional textures for liquid phase crystallized silicon thin-film solar cells on glass
Date Issued
01 December 2017
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Eisenhauer D.
Köppel G.
Jäger K.
Chen D.
Shargaieva O.
Sonntag P.
Amkreutz D.
Becker C.
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH
Publisher(s)
Nature Publishing Group
Abstract
Recently, liquid phase crystallization of thin silicon films has emerged as a candidate for thin-film photovoltaics. On 10 μm thin absorbers, wafer-equivalent morphologies and open-circuit voltages were reached, leading to 13.2% record efficiency. However, short-circuit current densities are still limited, mainly due to optical losses at the glass-silicon interface. While nano-structures at this interface have been shown to efficiently reduce reflection, up to now these textures caused a deterioration of electronic silicon material quality. Therefore, optical gains were mitigated due to recombination losses. Here, the SMooth Anti-Reflective Three-dimensional (SMART) texture is introduced to overcome this trade-off. By smoothing nanoimprinted SiO x nano-pillar arrays with spin-coated TiO x layers, light in-coupling into laser-crystallized silicon solar cells is significantly improved as successfully demonstrated in three-dimensional simulations and in experiment. At the same time, electronic silicon material quality is equivalent to that of planar references, allowing to reach V oc values above 630 mV. Furthermore, the short-circuit current density could be increased from 21.0 mA cm-2 for planar reference cells to 24.5 mA cm-2 on SMART textures, a relative increase of 18%. External quantum efficiency measurements yield an increase for wavelengths up to 700 nm compared to a state-of-the-art solar cell with 11.9% efficiency, corresponding to a j sc, EQE gain of 2.8 mA cm-2.
Volume
7
Issue
1
Number
2658
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería de materiales
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85020209213
PubMed ID
Source
Scientific Reports
ISSN of the container
20452322
Sponsor(s)
Seventh Framework Programme - 609788 - FP7
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus