Regensburg 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik
MM 26: Poster Session
MM 26.64: Poster
Dienstag, 23. März 2010, 14:45–16:30, Poster C
Efficient simulation of plasmonic structures for thin film silicon solar cells — •Daniel Lockau1,2, Sven Burger2,3, Lin Zschiedrich2,3, Frank Schmidt2,3, and Bernd Rech1 — 1Helmholtz–Zentrum Berlin, Berlin, Germany — 2Zuse–Institut Berlin, Berlin, Germany — 3JCMwave GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Thin film silicon solar cells suffer from the disadvantage of a low absorption coefficient of silicon in important spectral regions. In the case of a flat multilayer cell layout a considerable part of the incident light is reflected back out of the cell due to the low absorber thickness. It is therefore desirable to introduce scattering elements that prolong the average photon path length inside the solar cell’s absorber. Plasmonic structures are an upcoming area of research in this field. They might be better suited for optimization than other means of light trapping. The influences of periodic arrays of metal scatters on cell absorption can be very well assessed by different simulation methods.
We employ the finite element method for 3D simulations of Maxwell’s equations. The setup for our simulations has been proposed by Rockstuhl et al. (C. Rockstuhl, S. Fahr, F. Lederer, J. Appl. Phys. 104, 123102 (2008)) who numerically studied absorption enhancement in a thin bulk of amorphous silicon due to scattering on a periodic array of silver discs. Using the same setup we show that our method is very time and memory efficient for the simulation of such plasmonic structures. Absorption enhancement is shown for wavelengths above 500 nm compared to the absorption without silver discs.