Enhanced light trapping in thin-film solar cells by a directionally selective filter

A directionally selective multilayer filter is applied to a hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cell to improve the light trapping. The filter prevents non-absorbed long-wavelength photons from leaving the cell under oblique angles leading to an enhancement of the total optical path length for weakly absorbed light within the device by a factor of kappa(r) = 3.5. Parasitic absorption in the contact layers limits the effective path length improvement for the photovoltaic quantum efficiency to a factor of kappa(EQE) = 1.5. The total short-circuit current density increases by Delta J(sc) = 0.2 mAcm (2) due to the directional selectivity of the Bragg-like filter. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America 130.7408 Wavelength filtering devices