Nanopyramid structure for ultrathin c-Si tandem solar cells

Recently, ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells have gained tremendous interest because they are deemed to dramatically reduce material usage. However, the resulting conversion efficiency is still limited by the incomplete light absorption in such ultrathin devices. In this letter, we propose ultrathin a-Si/c-Si tandem solar cells with an efficient light trapping design, where a nanopyramid structure is introduced between the top and bottom cells. The superior light harvesting results in a 48% and 35% remarkable improvement of the short-circuit current density for the top and bottom cells, respectively. Meanwhile, the use of SiOx mixed-phase nanomaterial helps to provide the maximum light trapping without paying the price of reduced electrical performance, and conversion efficiencies of up to 13.3% have been achieved for the ultrathin tandem cell employing only 8 μm of silicon, which is 29% higher than the result obtained for the planar cell.