A high efficiency and cost effective Si thin film solar cell with novel periodic nanohole textured surface

Silicon thin film with nanohole array decorated surface is systematically studied via simulation for solar energy harvesting and compared with nanopillar array textured one. It is found that nanohole array structures can significantly improve the light absorption of the silicon thin film with optimized structural dimensions. Moreover, for the same thickness and optimized structure dimensions, the nanohole array shows better light-trapping than nanowire array. The electrical performance of the nanohole array textured silicon thin film solar cell is also optimized in terms of minority carrier diffusion length, emitter doping level, emitter junction depth after considering the impact of surface recombination velocity. The result provides a practical guideline to design and fabricate high efficiency nanohole textured Si thin film solar cell.