Silicon solar cell using optimized intermediate reflector layer

Thin film silicon based photovoltaic cells have the advantages of using low cost nontoxic abundant constituents and low thermal manufacturing budget. However, better long-term efficiencies need to be achieved overcoming its inherent bad electrical properties of amorphous and/or microcrystalline Silicon. For the goal of achieving best results, multijunction cells of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon thin layers are industrially and lab utilized in addition to using one or more light management techniques such as textured layers, periodic and plasmonic back reflectors, flattened reflective substrates and intermediate reflector layer (IRL) between multijunction cells. The latter, IRL, which is the focus of this paper, serves as spectrally selective layer between different cells of the multijunction silicon thin film solar cell. IRL, reflects to the top cell short wavelength while permitting and scattering longer ones to achieve the best possible short circuit current. In this study, a new optimized periodic design of Intermediate reflector layer in micromorph (two multijunction cells of Microcrystalline and Amorphous Silicon) thin film solar cells is proposed. The optically simulated short circuit current reaches record values for same thickness designs when using all-ZnO design and even better results is anticipated if Lacquer material is used in combination with ZnO. The design methodology used in the paper can be easily applied to different types of IRL materials and also extended to triple and the relatively newly proposed quadruple thin films solar cells.