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Efficiency enhancement via metal-coated porous amorphous silicon back reflectors incorporated in amorphous silicon solar cells

  • Plasmonics, Photonics, and Metamaterials Research Letter
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Abstract

We present two straightforward and cost-effective methods, based on metal-assisted chemical etching and a direct imprinting technique, to fabricate metal-covered porous amorphous silicon back reflectors for amorphous silicon solar cells. We demonstrate an increase of approximately 30% in both short-circuit current and overall efficiency with respect to a cell with a flat metal back reflector. This is achieved by implementing light trapping via either a roughened porous amorphous silicon layer or an imprinted periodic grating. This work provides a pathway to increase amorphous silicon solar cell efficiency via increased absorption without significantly impacting processing costs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) grant no. HDTRA1-10-1-004 and the National Science Foundation through the Tennessee Solar Conversion and Storage Outreach, Research and Education (TN-SCORE) grant no. NSF EPS-1004083. Fabrication of the silicon grating stamps was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. Solar cell fabrication was carried out in the Vanderbilt Institute of Science and Engineering (VINSE). The authors thank C. D. Hungerford, G. A. Rodriguez, J. W. Mares, and K. J. Miller for their technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Material Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37235, USA

    Shweta Bhandaru

  2. Department of Physics, University of Pavia, via Bassi 6, 1-27100, Pavia, Italy

    Marco Liscidini

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37235, USA

    Angelo Bozzola & Sharon M. Weiss

Authors
  1. Shweta Bhandaru
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  2. Marco Liscidini
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  3. Angelo Bozzola
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  4. Sharon M. Weiss
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Liscidini.

Additional information

Present address: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 1-16159, Genova, Italy.

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Supplementary Material

The supplementary material for this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2016.15.

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Bhandaru, S., Liscidini, M., Bozzola, A. et al. Efficiency enhancement via metal-coated porous amorphous silicon back reflectors incorporated in amorphous silicon solar cells. MRS Communications 6, 117–123 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2016.15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2016.15

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