Light absorption enhancement in ultrathin film solar cell with embedded dielectric nanowires

Mahmoud A Elrabiaey; Mohamed Hussein; Mohamed Farhat O Hameed; Salah S A Obayya

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-74453-7

Light absorption enhancement in ultrathin film solar cell with embedded dielectric nanowires

Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 16;10(1):17534. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-74453-7.

Authors

Mahmoud A Elrabiaey¹, Mohamed Hussein^{1

2}, Mohamed Farhat O Hameed^{3

4

5}, Salah S A Obayya⁶

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Photonics and Smart Materials, Zewail City of Science and Technology, October Gardens, 6th of October City, Giza, 12578, Egypt.
² Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Abbassia, 11566, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Centre for Photonics and Smart Materials, Zewail City of Science and Technology, October Gardens, 6th of October City, Giza, 12578, Egypt. mfarahat@zewailcity.edu.eg.
⁴ Nanotechnology and Nanoelectronics Engineering Program, University of Science and Technology, Zewail City of Science and Technology, October Gardens, 6th of October City, Giza, 12578, Egypt. mfarahat@zewailcity.edu.eg.
⁵ Mathematics and Engineering Physics Department, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura, 35516, Egypt. mfarahat@zewailcity.edu.eg.
⁶ Centre for Photonics and Smart Materials, Zewail City of Science and Technology, October Gardens, 6th of October City, Giza, 12578, Egypt. sobayya@zewailcity.edu.eg.

Abstract

A novel design of thin-film crystalline silicon solar cell (TF C-Si-SC) is proposed and numerically analyzed. The reported SC has 1.0 µm thickness of C-Si with embedded dielectric silicon dioxide nanowires (NWs). The introduced NWs increase the light scattering in the active layer which improves the optical path length and hence the light absorption. The SC geometry has been optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique to improve the optical and electrical characteristics. The suggested TF C-Si-SC with two embedded NWs offers photocurrent density ([Formula: see text]) of 32.8 mA cm^-2 which is higher than 18 mA cm^-2 of the conventional thin film SC with an enhancement of 82.2%. Further, a power conversion efficiency of 15.9% is achieved using the reported SC.