Optical Modeling of Black Silicon for Solar Cells Using Effective Index Techniques

Texturing the surface with both micro and nano scale features to form black silicon is a promising approach in improving solar cell efficiency. In optical modeling of such a surface, it is difficult to balance the accuracy and computational resource. In this work, we develop on a semianalytical mode...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of photovoltaics 2017-11, Vol.7 (6), p.1556-1562
Main Authors: Rahman, Tasmiat, Boden, Stuart A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Black Si
effective medium
Finite difference method
Finite difference methods
Finite difference time domain method
finite-difference time domain (FDTD)
Mathematical models
Multiscale analysis
nanoscale
Nanoscale devices
Numerical methods
optics
Photovoltaic cells
Ray tracing
ray-tracing (RT)
Silicon
Solar cells
Texturing
Time domain analysis
transfer matrix method (TMM)
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Summary:Texturing the surface with both micro and nano scale features to form black silicon is a promising approach in improving solar cell efficiency. In optical modeling of such a surface, it is difficult to balance the accuracy and computational resource. In this work, we develop on a semianalytical model, effective index technique (EIT), which utilizes a finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method to represent the nanoscale texturing as an effective medium, and then apply this to microscale structures, which can then be modeled using the transfer matrix method and ray-tracing. We fabricate and model both periodic and random nanoscale textures, and analyze the accuracy of several effective index models against measured reflectivity. The limitations in the model are identified and coherency of the films is studied. The semianalytical method is shown to perform better than the other effective medium approaches for modeling black silicon and is applicable to modeling multiscale textures, whereas full numerical methods such as FDTD are not. However, although the EIT approach predicts the trends in antireflective performance of a texture, it remains inaccurate when compared with the experiment. Also, as with all effective medium approaches, the EIT does not account for light trapping through scattering.
ISSN:2156-3381
2156-3403
DOI:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2017.2748900