Flexible flux plane simulations of parasitic absorption in nanoplasmonic thin-film silicon solar cells

Abstract

Photovoltaic light trapping theory and experiment do not always clearly demonstrate how much useful optical absorption is enhanced, as opposed to parasitic absorption that cannot improve efficiencies. In this work, we develop a flexible flux plane method for capturing these parasitic losses within finite-difference time-domain simulations, which was applied to three classical types of light trapping cells (e.g., periodic, random and plasmonic). Then, a 2 mu m-thick c-Si cell with a correlated random front texturing and a plasmonic back reflector is optimized. In the best case, 36.60 mA/cm(2) J(sc) is achieved after subtracting 3.74 mA/cm(2) of parasitic loss in a 2-mu m-thick c-Si cell slightly above the Lambertian limit.