Absorption enhancement in thin-film silicon solar cells with a Fourier-series based periodic array

Enhancing the light absorption in thin-film silicon solar cells is important for improving efficiency and reducing cost. In this paper, we propose a Fourier-series based periodic array (FSPA) for light trapping texture on the front surface of thin film silicon solar cells. The optimized texture with 300nm thickness yields a photocurrent of 27.05 mA/cm(2) at a silicon thickness of 1 mu m. The spectral analysis shows the texture exhibits better than inverted pyramid and cosine surface arrays in near-infrared region. The angular analysis shows that the texture outperforms inverted pyramid and cosine surface arrays at all incidence angles. For incidence angles within about [0 degrees, 65 degrees], the short circuit current density has no obvious decrease. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America