Search

Three typographical errors in our recently published paper Anderson et al. (2020) [1] are corrected, and a non-standard choice of units is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Coupled optoelectronic simulation of inorganic thin-film solar cells with periodically corrugated metallic back reflectors. • The Rigorous Coupled-Wave Approach (RCWA) is used to compute the electromagnetic field, taking into account solar irradiance. • The Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin method is used to solve the drift-diffusion model for electrons and holes. • Semiconductor layers can have bandgap graded in the thickness direction. • Optimization of geometric and bandgap parameters for maximum efficiency. A design tool was formulated for optimizing the efficiency of inorganic, thin-film, photovoltaic solar cells. The solar cell can have multiple semiconductor layers in addition to antireflection coatings, passivation layers, and buffer layers. The solar cell is backed by a metallic grating which is periodic along a fixed direction. The rigorous coupled-wave approach is used to calculate the electron-hole-pair generation rate. The hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method is used to solve the drift-diffusion equations that govern charge-carrier transport in the semiconductor layers. The chief output is the solar-cell efficiency which is maximized using the differential evolution algorithm to determine the optimal dimensions and bandgaps of the semiconductor layers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]