ENHANCED LIGHT TRAPPING ON THIN-FILM SOLAR CELLS FROM SCATTERING NANO PARTICLE ARRAYS

Thin-film solar cells focus on lowering the amount of material used as well as increasing the energy production. Inexpensive fabrication methods and effective light trapping are requisite for Thin Film solar cells to attain costcompetitiveness. The very optimistic reason is that the efficiency of a solar cell depends on both the quality of its semiconductor active layer, as well as on the presence of other dielectric and metallic structural components which improve light trapping and exploit plasmonicenhancement. Thin-film polycrystalline silicon is an attractive material for use in solar cells due to ideal band gap and its relative abundance. This paper keep in focus two main objectives, a highly scalable and inexpensive HWCVD deposition method that produces high quality material at minimal cost and the Evaluation of light trapping mechanisms employing FDTD simulations to determine the optimal expected optical characteristics of a thin-film device structure and to examine the potential of surface structures that will increase photon absorption in Thin-films