title: Adequacy of the rigorous coupled-wave approach for thin-film silicon solar cells with periodically corrugated metallic backreflectors: spectral analysis.
abstract: The rigorous coupled-wave approach (RCWA) is extensively used to compute optical absorption and photon absorption in thin-film photovoltaic solar cells backed by 1D metallic gratings when the wave vector of the incident light lies wholly in the grating plane. The RCWA algorithm converges rapidly for incident s-polarized light over the entire 400-1100 nm solar spectrum. It also performs well for incident p-polarized light in the 400-650 nm spectral regime, but even with a large number of Floquet harmonics in the solution, the total reflectance is underestimated in the 650-1100 nm spectral regime. Despite that shortcoming, the RCWA underestimates the solar-spectrum-integrated photon absorption rate only by 5%-10% for p-polarized light. As sunlight is almost unpolarized, the RCWA should be considered adequate to design thin-film silicon solar cells with periodically corrugated metallic backreflectors.
authors.forename: Mikhail V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Shuba
authors.forename: Muhammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Faryad
authors.forename: Manuel E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Solano
authors.forename: Peter B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Monk
authors.forename: Akhlesh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lakhtakia