Facing the challenge of liquid phase crystallizing silicon on textured glass substrates

Abstract

A major limitation in current liquid phase crystallized (LPC) silicon thin-film record solar cells are optical losses caused by their planar glass-silicon interface. In this study, silicon is grown on nanoimprinted periodically as well as on randomly textured glass substrates and successfully implemented into state-of-the-art LPC silicon thin-film solar cell stacks. By systematically varying every layer the whole sample stack is optimized regarding its anti-reflection ability. Compared to an optimized planar reference device, a reduction of reflection losses by -3.5% (absolute) on the random and by -9.4% (absolute) on the periodic texture has been achieved in the wavelength range of interest.