Design and Analysis of Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells Using FDTD Method

Silicon based solar cells are having weak absorption of light and hence, needs light trapping mechanism for the enhancement of solar cell performance. This paper explores the designing of thin film solar cells based on distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and diffraction grating using FDTD method. Three DBR pairs with 0.8 μm center wavelength were found to be good choice for better performance of solar cells. A relative enhancement in short-circuit current is observed for 5, 10 and 20 μm cell thicknesses respectively which corresponds to an enhanced absorption in the wavelength 450-1100 nm. Use of three binary layer based grating yields enhanced quantum efficiency as comparison to single layer grating based solar cell.