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Optical modelling of black silicon for solar cells using effective index techniques

Optical modelling of black silicon for solar cells using effective index techniques
Optical modelling 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 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.
1556-1562
Rahman, Tasmiat
e7432efa-2683-484d-9ec6-2f9c568d30cd
Boden, Stuart A.
83976b65-e90f-42d1-9a01-fe9cfc571bf8
Rahman, Tasmiat
e7432efa-2683-484d-9ec6-2f9c568d30cd
Boden, Stuart A.
83976b65-e90f-42d1-9a01-fe9cfc571bf8

Rahman, Tasmiat and Boden, Stuart A. (2017) Optical modelling of black silicon for solar cells using effective index techniques. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 7 (6), 1556-1562. (doi:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2017.2748900).

Record type: Article

Abstract

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.

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Accepted/In Press date: 28 August 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 September 2017
Published date: November 2017

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 415226
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/415226
PURE UUID: 9bcc6468-b73f-4a23-a78d-ac27c1f27d59
ORCID for Tasmiat Rahman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6485-2128
ORCID for Stuart A. Boden: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4232-1828

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Date deposited: 02 Nov 2017 17:32
Last modified: 16 Jul 2024 01:46

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Contributors

Author: Tasmiat Rahman ORCID iD
Author: Stuart A. Boden ORCID iD

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