| AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Electronic Materials and Photonics | Monday Sessions |
| Session EM-MoM |
| Session: | Advances in Photonics |
| Presenter: | Seok Jun Han, University of New Mexico |
| Authors: | S.J. Han, University of New Mexico S. Ghosh, University of New Mexico O.K. Abudayyeh, University of New Mexico B.R. Hoard, University of New Mexico E.C. Culler, University of New Mexico J.E. Bonilla, University of New Mexico S.M. Han, University of New Mexico S.E. Han, University of New Mexico |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
While various materials have been investigated for photovoltaics, solar cells based on crystalline silicon (c-Si) dominate the current photovoltaics market. To reduce the cost of c-Si cells, wafer manufacturing companies have produced competitively priced thin c-Si films, ranging from a few microns to tens of microns, using a kerfless process. In such thin-film c-Si cells, light absorption becomes poorer than in thick films and light trapping is crucial to increase the photovoltaic efficiency. Han et al. have demonstrated that, among various light-trapping schemes, symmetry breaking in photonic nanostructures can approach the Lambertian light-trapping limit very closely. However, fabricating symmetry-breaking nanostructures in a scalable, cost-effective, manufacturable manner remains elusive. Here, we introduce a new approach to systematically break the symmetry in photonic nanostructures on c-Si surface. Using our approach, we fabricate low-symmetry inverted nanopyramid structures. Our method makes use of low-cost, manufacturable wet etching steps on c-Si(100) wafers without relying on expensive off-cut wafers. Our experiment and computational modeling demonstrate that the symmetry breaking can increase the Shockley-Queisser efficiency from 27.0 to 27.9% for a 10-micron-thick c-Si film. Further, our computation reveals that this improvement would increase from 28.1 to 30.0% with over-etching for a 20-micron-thick c-Si film.