Light absorption enhancement in ultrathin film solar cell with embedded dielectric nanowires

Abstract A novel design of thin-film crystalline silicon solar cell (TF C-Si-SC) is proposed and numerically analyzed. The reported SC has 1.0 µm thickness of C-Si with embedded dielectric silicon dioxide nanowires (NWs). The introduced NWs increase the light scattering in the active layer which improves the optical path length and hence the light absorption. The SC geometry has been optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique to improve the optical and electrical characteristics. The suggested TF C-Si-SC with two embedded NWs offers photocurrent density ( $${J}_{ph}$$ J ph ) of 32.8 mA cm−2 which is higher than 18 mA cm−2 of the conventional thin film SC with an enhancement of 82.2%. Further, a power conversion efficiency of 15.9% is achieved using the reported SC.