Lateral matching of periodic front and back textures in thin film silicon solar cells

We systematically study the influence of the relative lateral position of the front and back periodic textures on the light absorption in microcrystalline Si thin film solar cells by finite difference time domain method. We show that there is an optimum lateral position match between the periodic front and back textures, which allows maximum light absorption to be obtained in the Si thin film solar cells. A relative lateral shift between the front and back periodic textures breaks the symmetry of the conformal cell structure, which can result in more wave modes in the Si thin film solar cells.