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Updated: May 14, 2026

Polycrystalline Silicon Thin-film Solar cells with Plasmonic-enhanced Light-trapping
Published on: July 2, 2012
Enhanced broadband and omni-directional performance of polycrystalline Si solar cells by using discrete multilayer
Seung Jae Oh1, Sameer Chhajed, David J Poxson
1Department of Materials and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, 790-784, South Korea.
Abstract:
The performance enhancement of polycrystalline Si solar cells by using an optimized discrete multilayer anti-reflection (AR) coating with broadband and omni-directional characteristics is presented. Discrete multilayer AR coatings are optimized by a genetic algorithm, and experimentally demonstrated by refractive-index tunable SiO₂ nano-helix arrays and co-sputtered (SiO₂)x(TiO₂)₁₋x thin film layers. The optimized multilayer AR coating shows a reduced total reflection, leading to the high incident-photon-to-electron conversion efficiency over a correspondingly wide range of wavelengths and incident angles, offering a very promising way to harvest more solar energy by virtually any type of solar cells for a longer time of a day.

