Enhanced light absorption in thin film silicon solar cells with Fourier-series based periodic nanostructures.

We proposed a Fourier-series based periodic nanostructure(FSPN) for light trapping in thin film silicon solar cells. By globally optimizing the Fourier coefficients across entire silicon absorption spectrum, we obtained a FSPN structure with short circuit current density greater than 24 mA/cm(2) for a 1μm real silicon absorption layer. The spectral analysis shows at normal incidence the FSPN exhibits a collection effect of periodic gratings and performs over 84.6% better than random texture. The angular analysis shows that the FSPN outperforms grating and random textures within 70 °.