Light trapping technique boosts solar cell power by 30 percent
The method was developed for hematite (iron-oxide, Fe2O3) cells meant for hydrogen production via water splitting, but could achieve its goal for other types of solar cells as well. In addition, only simple optical materials were used, adding to the sustainability and cost effectiveness of this approach.
The research was conducted by a joint team headed by Prof. Avner Rothschild from the Department of Material Science and Engineering of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and by Dr. Avi Niv from the Alexandre Yersin Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics of BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. The findings are published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A in an article entitled ‘Separation of Light Confinement and Absorption Sites for Enhancing Solar Water Splitting’.
“Finding a way to harness ray optics for boosting the absorption of ultrathin cells, as was done here, could have a large impact on the future of solar cells,” suggested Niv.
One of the ways of increasing the cost effectiveness of solar cells is by reducing the thickness of their active light absorbing layers, the part of the cell that turns light into electricity. The challenge is to have a thinner absorber but to sustain overall absorptivity. To meet the challenge, optical trapping methods were devised. Trapping the light within the interior of the cell causes a longer effective beam path through the active layer, which in turn raises the absorptivity. For more than four decades now, improvement in light trapping went hand in hand with thinner cells that were cheaper and more efficient.
For the next generation of solar cells, however, more power at lower costs is expected. The demands are often met by considering active layers thinner than the typical wavelength of sunlight itself. The problem is that in such thin layers light behaves as a wave, rendering ray-based trapping ineffective. For this reason light trapping methods that are based on the wave nature of light emerged. While impressive progress has been made in the field, none of the results so far rival ray optics when it comes to utility. Thus, the researchers returned to ray optics and managed to develop a new method that combines ray-based trapping with wave optics absorption. The goal was achieved by structural separation of the trapping and absorption sites within the cell. Light is first trapped in a lossless thick substrate layer that later feeds the absorption in a deep subwavelength active hematite layer. Enhancements of more than 30% in the power production of the cell were shown using this approach. Researchers also predict that even higher enhancements are in fact possible, reaching more than 40%.
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