A thin-Film SIS Solar Cell Based on Distributed Silicon Nanoparticles

In this paper, a thin solar cell based on silicon nanospheres is proposed to trap and confine sunlight. The silicon nanospheres are distributed periodically and randomly inside the active layer and contribute in generating the electron-hole pairs via their resonances. To investigate the absorption in the proposed solar cell we use the generalized Mie theory, together with a three-dimensional full-wave simulator for validation. Using the analytical model and the simulation we show that solar cells with random nanospheres not only have easy fabrication but also a higher absorption in comparison to the conventional cells with equivalent volume. Moreover, the photo-generated current of the new cell is increased by the factors of 3.42 and 3.45 for TM and TE polarizations, respectively. In addition, the numerical results show that the enhancement in the photo-generated current in the random distribution leads to an extra 10% improvement in comparison to the periodic one.