Advancing tandem solar cells by spectrally selective multilayer intermediate reflectors

Thin-film silicon tandem solar cells are composed of an amorphous silicon top cell and a microcrystalline silicon bottom cell, stacked and connected in series. In order to match the photocurrents of the top cell and the bottom cell, a proper photon management is required. Up to date, single-layer intermediate reflectors of limited spectral selectivity are applied to match the photocurrents of the top and the bottom cell. In this paper, we design and prototype multilayer intermediate reflectors based on aluminum doped zinc oxide and doped microcrystalline silicon oxide with a spectrally selective reflectance allowing for improved current matching and an overall increase of the charge carrier generation. The intermediate reflectors are successfully integrated into state-of-the-art tandem solar cells resulting in an increase of overall short-circuit current density by 0.7 mA/cm(2) in comparison to a tandem solar cell with the standard single-layer intermediate reflector. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America