Light-trapping and antireflective coatings for amorphous Si-based thin film solar cells

In this paper, we study the efficiency of several types of all-dielectric, non-resonant, antireflection, and light-trapping coatings for the enhancement of photovoltaic absorption in thin-film silicon solar cells. We compare the enhancement of the photovoltaic absorption offered by a square array of nano-pillar shaped voids in the dielectric covering of the cell with that granted by a flat blooming layer, and a densely packed array of dielectric nanospheres. We optimize these coatings and show that the newly proposed nanostructure allows a significant increase of the photovoltaic absorption. The dependence of antireflection and light-trapping properties on the angle of incidence is numerically investigated, and it is shown that the array of voids keeps optimal also after averaging over the incidence angles.