Global optimization of silicon photovoltaic cell front coatings
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Johnson_Global optimization.pdf
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4.2 MB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Ghebrebrhan, Michael
Bermel, Peter A.
Joannopoulos, John D.
Johnson, Steven G.
Avniel, Yehuda B.
Date Issued
April 2009
Journal
Optics Express
Publisher
Optical Society of America
Citation
Ghebrebrhan, Michael, Peter Bermel, Yehuda Avniel, John D. Joannopoulos, and Steven G. Johnson. “Global optimization of silicon photovoltaic cell front coatings.” Optics Express 17, no. 9 (April 22, 2009): 7505. © 2009 Optical Society of America
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The front-coating (FC) of a solar cell controls its efficiency, determining admission of light into the absorbing material and potentially trapping light to enhance thin absorbers. Single-layer FC designs are well known, especially for thick absorbers where their only purpose is to reduce reflections. Multilayer FCs could improve performance, but require global optimization to design. For narrow bandwidths, one can always achieve nearly 100% absorption. For the entire solar bandwidth, however, a second FC layer improves performance by 6.1% for 256 μm wafer-based cells, or by 3.6% for 2 μm thin-film cells, while additional layers yield rapidly diminishing returns.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.17.007505
