Optical Properties of Black Silicon: An Analysis

Silicon (Si) continues to be the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the manufacture of solar cells. Si, an indirect band gap semiconducting material, has a reflectance of about 30% in the visible range of wavelengths. Standard Si solar cells are not entirely useful in the infrared spectrum region. In order to enhance the performance of silicon solar cells, reflectance losses must be minimized and absorption must be maximized. In the solar cell industry, anti-reflection (AR) coating is used to suppress reflection losses. AR coatings are limited in use because they only reduce the reflectance for a narrow range of wavelengths and incident angle since their functionality is based on a quarter-wavelength coating. Surface texturing is a technique, by which the reflectivity is reduced in a wide range of wavelengths. Black silicon (B-Si) is a material with surface roughness in the micron scale. B-Si, when used instead of crystalline Si (c-Si), offers the possibility to increase the absorption of light in the visible and infrared range of wavelengths. B-Si has a very low reflectivity in the visible range of wavelengths. It exhibits high absorptance in the visible and infrared region. The main objective of this paper is to study the optical properties of B-Si by simulation and compare them with the simulated and experimental optical properties of B-Si and c-Si.