Structural Optimization of Photonic Crystals for Enhancing Optical Absorption of Thin Film Silicon Solar Cell Structures

We carry out the structural design of photonic crystals to enhance the optical absorption of thin-film microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si) solar cells using two methods. First, by exhaustive search, we choose a structure with the largest absorption within the investigated patterns. Then we employ a sensitivity analysis to finely modulate the structure for further increase of the optical absorption. The obtained μc-Si solar cell structure with a photonic crystal in this work has more than twice as much optical absorption as that without a photonic crystal.