Enhanced absorption of solar cell made of photonic crystal by geometrical design

Abstract

In this paper, via numerical simulation we designed the geometry of solar cell made by one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals with two kinds of materiel (silicon (Si) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H)) in order to enhance its absorption. The absorption characteristics of light in the solar cell structures are simulated by using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The calculation results show that the enhancement of absorption in patterned structure is apparent comparing to the unpatterned one, which proves the ability of the structure to produce photonic crystal solar cell. We found solar cell geometries as a 2D photonic crystal enable to increase the absorption between 380 and 750 nm.

Keywords

finite-difference time-domain / two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals / solar cell

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique via funding through the CNEPRU National program (No. J0205620130046).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg