Towards High-Efficiency Triple-Junction Solar Cells with Bio-Inspired Nanostructures

Abstract

Triple-junction solar cells offer extremely high power conversion efficiency with minimal semiconductor material usage, and hence are promising for large-scale electricity generation. To fully exploit the broad absorption range, antireflective schemes based on biomimetic nanostructures become very appealing due to sub-wavelength scale features that can collectively function as a graded refractive index (GRIN) medium to photons. The structures are generally fabricated with a single-type dielectric material which guarantees both optical design robustness and mechanical durability under concentrated illumination. However, surface recombination and current matching issues arising from patterning still challenge the realization of biomimetic nanostructures on a few micrometer thick epitaxial layers for MJSCs. In this presentation, bio-inspired antireflective structures based on silicon nitride (SiNx) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) materials are demonstrated on monolithically grown Ga0.5In0.5P/In0.01Ga0.99As/Ge triple-junction solar cells. The nano-fabrication employs scalable polystyrene nanosphere lithography, followed by inductively-coupled-plasma reactive-ion-etching (ICP-RIE). We show that the fabricated devices exhibit omni-directional enhancement of photocurrent and power conversion efficiency, offering a viable solution to concentrated illumination with large angles of incidence. Moreover, a comprehensive design scheme is also presented to tailor the reflectance spectrum of sub-wavelength structures for maximum photocurrent output of tandem cells.