Light Absorption Improvement in Si Thin Film Solar Cells Using Combination of Graphene-based nanoparticle and strips-grooves geometry

Excitation of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) in Sub-wavelength dielectric/metal structures is a key to enhance the light absorption of thin film solar cells (TFSCs). We design a SiO 2 /Ag nanostructured grooves geometry at the rear-side of a Si-based TFSC to excite SPPs. This geometry scatters light inside absorber layer in many directions resulting in absorption enhancement. In addition, we consider SiO 2 corrugated strip geometry at the top of the absorber layer as light trapping technique. The height and width of the SiO 2 strips are 60 nm and the height and width of the grooves are 30 nm. We apply this technique in the Si-based TFSC that contains Ag/graphene nanoparticles (NP-TFSC) in absorber layer as localized plasmon resonance elements. The thickness of absorber layer is 800 nm. We simulate this TFSC utilizing FDTD method. Results of simulations reveal a 21.36% absorption enhancement, a 16.39% Jsc increment and a 3.9% in conversion efficiency improvement.