title: Enhanced photon absorption and carrier generation in nanowire solar cells.
abstract: Overall performance of a thin film solar cell is determined by the efficiency of converting photons to electrons through light absorption, carrier generation, and carrier collection. Recently, photon management has emerged as a powerful tool to further boost this conversion efficiency. Here we propose a novel nanograting solar cell design that achieves enhanced broadband light absorption and carrier generation in conjunction with the reduced use of active and non-earth-abundant materials. A test using this design for the short circuit current density in CuInxGa(1-x)Se2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells shows up to 250% enhancement when compared to the bare thin film cells. In addition, placing metal strips on top of the nanograting to act as the top electrode reduces the use of non-earth-abundant materials that is normally used as the transparent conducting materials. This novel solar cell design has the potential to become a new solar cell platform technology for various thin film solar cell systems.
authors.affiliation: HeFei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Shaomin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Randy J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Knize
authors.forename: Kitt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Reinhardt
authors.forename: Yalin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Shaochen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen