Photonic assisted light trapping integrated in ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells by nanoimprint lithography

We report on the fabrication of two-dimensional periodic photonic nanostructures by nanoimprint lithography and dry etching and their integration into a 1-mu m-thin mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. Thanks to the periodic nanopatterning, a better in-coupling and trapping of light is achieved, resulting in an absorption enhancement. The proposed light trapping mechanism can be explained as the superposition of a graded index effect and of the diffraction of light inside the photoactive layer. The absorption enhancement is translated into a 23% increase in short-circuit current, as compared to the benchmark cell, resulting in an increase in energy-conversion efficiency. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4749810]