Disorder Improves Light Absorption in Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells with Hybrid Light Trapping Structure

We present a systematic simulation study on the impact of disorder in thin film silicon solar cells with hybrid light trapping structure. For the periodical structures introducing certain randomness in some parameters, the nanophotonic light trapping effect is demonstrated to be superior to their periodic counterparts. The nanophotonic light trapping effect can be associated with the increased modes induced by the structural disorders. Our study is a systematic proof that certain disorder is conceptually an advantage for nanophotonic light trapping concepts in thin film solar cells. The result is relevant to the large field of research on nanophotonic light trapping which currently investigates and prototypes a number of new concepts including disordered periodic and quasiperiodic textures. The random effect on the shape of the pattern (position, height, and radius) investigated in this paper could be a good approach to estimate the influence of experimental inaccuracies for periodic or quasi-periodic structures.