Reflection controlling metasurfaces for solar cell applications

Abstract

In this study, we propose a new approach for controlling reflection of light by using highly efficient and polarization insensitive all-dielectric metasurfaces. Moreover, we applied our model on the planar silicon solar cell to manage light trapping. For the inital design, TiO2 nano-pillars with single diameter is arranged on the silicon substrate. However, single diameter nano pillars is not enough to reducereflection covering all solar spectrum. To induce reflection reduction over the entire visible spectrum, we include different pillars with varying diameters. The reflection of final structure with three rods is lower than 17% at 400-1000 nm. Numerical results show that the short circuit current and solar cell efficiency has been enhanced by factors of 1.66 and 1.62 compared to planar basic solar cell. The presented method allows to improve absorbing efficiency of solar cell via reducing reflection and enhancing light trapping. © 2019 SPIE.