title: Biomimetic and plasmonic hybrid light trapping for highly efficient ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells.
abstract: Designing effective light-trapping structures for the insufficiently absorbed long-wavelength light in ultrathin silicon solar cells represents a key challenge to achieve low cost and highly efficient solar cells. We propose a hybrid structure based on the biomimetic silicon moth-eye structure combined with Ag nanoparticles to achieve advanced light trapping in 2 μm thick crystalline silicon solar cells approaching the Yablonovitch limit. By synergistically using the Mie resonances of the silicon moth-eye structure and the plasmonic resonances of the Ag nanoparticles, the integrated absorption enhancement achieved across the usable solar spectrum is 69% compared with the cells with the conventional light trapping design. This is significantly larger than both the silicon moth-eye structure (58%) and Ag nanoparticle (41%) individual light trapping. The generated photocurrent in the 2 μm thick silicon layer is as large as 33.4 mA/cm2, which is equivalent to that generated by a 30 μm single-pass absorption in the silicon. The research paves the way for designing highly efficient light trapping structures in ultrathin silicon solar cells.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D032701:Biomimetics; D002452:Cell Count; D005123:Eye; D008027:Light; D009036:Moths; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D049329:Nanostructures; D036103:Nanotechnology; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry; D012993:Solar Energy
chemical_list: D012825:Silicon