Coupled optical and electrical analysis for thin-film solar cells with embedded dielectric nanoparticles

Combined optical and electrical simulations were performed for thin-film (silicon) solar cell structures with dielectric (silicon-dioxide) nanoparticles embedded in the active region for efficiency enhancement. The efficiency enhancement due to optimally sized nanoparticles is found to be 22% and 15% in the constant coverage area and constant pitch configurations, respectively; further, the enhancement qualitatively follows the trends expected from optical-only simulations. This, however, assumes a good quality dielectric-semiconductor interface, whereas heavy recombination at this interface is seen to degrade the efficiency significantly - setting an upper limit on the surface recombination velocity up to which embedding nanoparticles is beneficial.