PHOTONIC BAND GAP MATERIALS AND MONOLAYER SOLAR CELL

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate theoretically an efficient way to improve the optical properties of the PIN silicon solar cell. We design an anti-reflecting coating (ARC) from one-dimensional ternary photonic crystals (PCs). Also, we design a back-reflector that composed of one-dimensional binary PC. By adding ARC layers, we have observed that the absorption is increased from 0.5 to 0.75. Moreover, by adding back reflector layers, we found that the absorption values rise to reach over 0.95 in the range of the photonic band gap (PBG) of the back reflector. Thus, using PCs in each ARC and back reflector has a significant enhancement of the absorption of the cell. Our design could have a distinct effect on the conversion efficiency of the cell. We use transfer matrix method to optimize the PBG of the back reflector. Finally, the numerical and simulated results of the cell are investigated by COMSOL Multiphysics that based on the finite element method (FEM).