Performance enhancement of thin film silicon solar cells based on distributed Bragg reflector & diffraction grating

The influence of various designing parameters were investigated and explored for high performance solar cells. Single layer grating based solar cell of 50 mu m thickness gives maximum efficiency up to 24 % whereas same efficiency is achieved with the use of three bilayers grating based solar cell of 30 mu m thickness. Remarkably, bilayer grating based solar cell design not only gives broadband absorption but also enhancement in efficiency with reduced cell thickness requirement. This absorption enhancement is attributed to the high reflection and diffraction from DBR and grating respectively. The obtained short-circuit current were 29.6, 32.9, 34.6 and 36.05 mA/cm(2) of 5, 10, 20 and 30 mu m cell thicknesses respectively. These presented designing efforts would be helpful to design and realize new generation of solar cells. (C) 2014 Author(s).