Research Council of Norway

 Today, solar cell technology development and industry are striving for thinner and thus more cost-effective solar cells. Thinner silicon solar cells address the cost effectiveness barrier, as their production costs are low. Nevertheless, in order to keep the same efficiency, research has been addressing effective light management, which is expected to provide ultrahigh-efficiency thin cells at low cost. Light management can be done by adding nanostructures on the front side, at the back surface or inside of solar cells in order to keep light as long time as possible in the neighborhood of the energy converting absorbing layer. While it has been shown that architectures with spherical and cylindrical nanoimprints can improve the efficiency of solar cells considerably, the physical rational for the absorption enhancement is not completely understood. In addition, a versatile theoretical tool that can effectively design architectures of solar cells with nanoimprints is not available.

 This project suggests to develop a theoretical model for optimization of architectures of nanoimprints. The developed model will be used to optimize the design of solar cells with nanoimprints for two types of materials. The optimized design will be validated numerically and experimentally. The project involves experts from solar cell technology and theoretical physics.

Literature:

Seim E., Kohler A., Lukacs R., Brandsrud M.A, Marstein E.S, Olsen E., Blümel R.
Wave chaos enhanced light trapping in optically thin solar cells
Chaos 31 (2021) 063136

Brandsrud M.A., Blümel R., Lukacs R., Seim E., Stensrud Marstein E, Olsen E., Kohler A.
Investigation of resonance structures in optically thin solar cells
Journal of Photonics for Energy, 11 (2021) 024501.

Brandsrud M.A., Blümel R., Heitmann Solheim J., Kohler A.
The effect of deformation of absorbing scatterers on Mie-type signatures in infrared microspectroscopy
Scientific Reports 11 (2021) 4675

Seim E., Kohler A., Lukacs R., Brandsrud M.A, Marstein E.S, Olsen E., Blümel R. 
Chaos: A new mechanism for enhancing the optical generation rate in thin-film solar cells.
SPIE West 10913 (2019). Chaos 29 (2019) 093132

Brandsrud M.A., Seim E., Lukacs R., Kohler A., Marstein E.S., Olsen E., Blümel R. 
Exact ray theory for the calculation of the optical generation rate in optically thin solar cells.
Physica E: Low-dimensional Systems and Nanostructures 105 (2019) 125 – 138.