Smooth anti-reflective three-dimensional textures for liquid phase crystallized silicon thin-film solar cells on glass

Abstract

Recently, liquid phase crystallization of thin silicon films has emerged as a candidate for thin-film photovoltaics. On 10 μm thin absorbers, wafer-equivalent morphologies and open-circuit voltages were reached, leading to 13.2% record efficiency. However, short-circuit current densities are still limited, mainly due to optical losses at the glass-silicon interface. While nano-structures at this interface have been shown to efficiently reduce reflection, up to now these textures caused a deterioration of electronic silicon material quality. Therefore, optical gains were mitigated due to recombination losses. Here, the SMooth Anti-Reflective Three-dimensional (SMART) texture is introduced to overcome this trade-off. By smoothing nanoimprinted SiO x nano-pillar arrays with spin-coated TiO x layers, light in-coupling into laser-crystallized silicon solar cells is significantly improved as successfully demonstrated in three-dimensional simulations and in experiment. At the same time, electronic silicon material quality is equivalent to that of planar references, allowing to reach V oc values above 630 mV. Furthermore, the short-circuit current density could be increased from 21.0 mA cm-2 for planar reference cells to 24.5 mA cm-2 on SMART textures, a relative increase of 18%. External quantum efficiency measurements yield an increase for wavelengths up to 700 nm compared to a state-of-the-art solar cell with 11.9% efficiency, corresponding to a j sc, EQE gain of 2.8 mA cm-2.