Modeling of thin film silicon solar cells with improved open circuit voltage

The purpose of this work is to develop a numerical code for modeling the performance of thin film plasmonic solar cells performing a detailed analysis of both the light interaction with the solar cell and the resulting charging transport due to the photovoltaic effect. The continuity and Poisson equations were modeled in each layer of thin film silicon solar cells using finite difference method. In each layer the system of equations were solved numerically. The mesh size was chosen to be smaller than the Debye length. Because of the large bandgap of amorphous silicon the intrinsic carrier concentration is lower in thin film silicon solar cells. Different parameters like energy bands, electron and hole concentrations, electric field, voltage, current densities etc. were calculated at each mesh point. The generation rate for carrier transport modeling was calculated from full wave electromagnetic simulations.