An efficient light trapping scheme based on textured conductive photonic crystal back reflector for performance improvement of amorphous silicon solar cells.

An efficient light trapping scheme named as textured conductive photonic crystal (TCPC) has been proposed and then applied as a back-reflector (BR) in n-i-p hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cell. This TCPC BR combined a flat one-dimensional photonic crystal and a randomly textured surface of chemically etched ZnO:Al. Total efficiency enhancement was obtained thanks to the sufficient conductivity, high reflectivity and strong light scattering of the TCPC BR. Unwanted intrinsic losses of surface plasmon modes are avoided. An initial efficiency of 9.66% for a-Si:H solar cell was obtained with short-circuit current density of 14.74 mA/cm², fill factor of 70.3%, and open-circuit voltage of 0.932 V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]