Enhancement of Light Absorption in Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells with Metallic Grating and One-Dimensional Photonic Crystals

We design an effective light trapping scheme through engineering metallic gratings and one-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals (PhCs) to increase the optical path length of light within the solar cells. This incorporation can result in broadband optical absorption enhancement not only for transverse magnetic polarized light but also for transverse-electric polarization. Even when no plasmonic mode can be excited, due to the high reflection of the PhCs, the absorption in the active region can still be enhanced. Rigorous coupled wave analysis results demonstrate that such a hybrid structure boosts the overall cell performance by increasing the light trapping capabilities and is especially effective at the silicon band edge. This kind of design can be used to increase the optical absorption over a wide spectral range and is relatively independent of the angle of incidence.