A non-resonant dielectric metamaterial for enhancement of thin-film solar cells

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates a dielectric metamaterial that enhances thin-film solar cell efficiency by reducing reflection and increasing light trapping, outperforming traditional coatings under various angles.

Contribution

It provides a detailed experimental validation of a non-resonant dielectric metamaterial for omnidirectional light trapping in thin-film solar cells, improving upon previous theoretical work.

Findings

Metamaterial reduces reflection and enhances light absorption.

Operates effectively under oblique and normal illumination angles.

Outperforms traditional flat coatings in light trapping efficiency.

Abstract

Recently, we have suggested dielectric metamaterial composed as an array of submicron dielectric spheres located on top of an amorphous thin-film solar cell. We have theoretically shown that this metamaterial can decrease the reflection and simultaneously can suppress the transmission through the photovoltaic layer because it transforms the incident plane wave into a set of focused light beams. This theoretical concept has been strongly developed and experimentally confirmed in the present paper. Here we consider the metamaterial for oblique angle illumination, redesign the solar cell and present a detailed experimental study of the whole structure. In contrast to our precedent theoretical study we show that our omnidirectional light-trapping structure may operate better than the optimized flat coating obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.