Micro-concentrated silicon heterojunction solar cells: Basic concept, device simulation, and system modeling

We propose a micro-concentrated silicon heterojunction silicon (MC-SHJ) solar cell design that integrates a microlens array into the traditional heterojunction solar cell structure. Device simulation shows that the photocurrent increases in the wavelength region of 1000-1200 nm. With superb infrared light harvesting and enhanced photocurrent gain, MC-SHJ cells are promising to improve the performance of silicon-based solar cells under normally incident light. However, system modeling shows that inefficient collection of diffuse radiation is a big challenge for real-world application. Several approaches to overcome this difficulty are briefly discussed.