New Numerical Simulation of the Optical Behavior of Nanocrystalline Silicon Thin Films

The absorption enhancement observed on the CPM spectra of nanotextured silicon thin films should be attributed to light scattering effects. A detailed numerical simulation based on Monte Carlo method is presented to calculate the absorption spectra of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon films according to the CPM setup. The calculated spectra of apparent optical absorption coefficient depend mainly on the characteristic parameters of nano-Si:H thin film, denoted crystalline/amorphous fraction which favors bulk light scattering phenomena and the film thickness which leads to the light scattering at the rough surface.