Absorption Enhancement in Thin-film Silicon-Based Solar Cells Using a Disordered Back Contact Structure

In this paper, a new disordered grating structure is proposed to be used as the back contact of thin-film solar cells in order to enhance absorption of these cells. The proposed method benefits from the wideband property of disordered structures. In the proposed technique, 12 randomly arranged rectangular slots are used as a supercell implemented in the back contact of the thin-film solar cell. The performance of the proposed structure is numerically verified and compared to periodic structures using a full-wave numerical simulation. The numerical results illustrate a short-circuit enhancement of 60% and 62% for TE and TM polarization, respectively when compared to a conventional thin-film solar cell without the disordered back contact.