Optical Absorption Enhancement in Thin Film Silicon Solar Sells: The Effect of Antireflection Coatings and Back-Reflectors

In this paper, a thin film silicon solar cell with anti-reflection coatings on front surface and the combination of periodic grating and photonic crystal on its back surface has been considered. The thickness and number of anti-reflection coatings, as well as the geometric and physical parameters of photonic crystal and grating are optimized to increase the optical absorption of solar cell. The simulations have been performed using the finite difference time domain method with Lumercial software. The results show that the optical absorption of solar cell has been increased significantly by utilizing the anti-reflection coatings, photonic crystal and grating.