Electro--optical simulation of diffraction in solar cells

A simulation method is presented and evaluated for simulating two- and three dimensional wave optical effects in crystalline silicon solar cells. Due to a thickness in the 100 µm range, optical properties of these solar cells typically are simulated, primarily through the use of ray-tracing. Recently, diffractive elements such as gratings or photonic crystals have been investigated for their application in crystalline silicon solar cells, making it necessary to consider two- and three dimensional wave optical effects. The presented approach couples a rigorous wave optical simulation to a semiconductor device simulation. In a first step, characteristic parameters, simulated for a reference setup using the electro-optical method and the standard procedure are compared. Occurring differences provide a measure to quantify the errors of the electro-optical method. These errors are below 0.4% relative. In a second step the electro-optical method is used to simulate a crystalline silicon solar cell with a back side diffractive grating. It is found that the grating enhances to short circuit current density jSC of the solar cell by more than 1 mA/cm².