Limits of light-trapping efficiency of prototypical lamellar 1-d metal gratings for amorphous silicon PV cells

Abstract

One-dimensional lamellar gratings allow a particularly efficient way for solving Maxwell's equations by expanding the electromagnetic field in the basis of exact eigenmodes of the Helmholtz equation. Then, the solution can be expressed analytically as a superposition of these eigenmodes and the accuracy depends only on the number of modes $N$ included. On this basis, we compute ideal limits of light-trapping performance for prototypical lamellar metal surface relief gratings in amorphous silicon (a-Si) PV cells assuming that light absorption in the metal and front surface reflection can be suppressed. We show that geometric asymmetry can increase absorption. For large enough $N$, convergence of absorption spectra for E polarisation is reached. For H polarisation it is reached for wavelengths $\lambda<$680-700 nm, while the integrated AM1.5-weighted absorption varies by less than 1\% at large $N$. For an a-Si layer with height 200 nm and normal incidence, we obtain upper limits of the total absorption of 79\% for E-polarisation with asymmetric- and 90\% for H-polarisation with sine-like lamellar grating reflectors, whereas a planar reflector yields a limit of 62\%, where 100\% stands for complete absorption for $350<\lambda<$770 nm.