Surface profile optimization of antireflection gratings for solar cells

The solar cell efficiency can be improved by antireflection gratings. In this paper, the antireflection gratings with different symmetrical surface profiles are investigated by numerical simulations based on the Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis. Simulated results show that the antireflection performance of sharp profile such as quadratic profile has a significant improvement compared with triangular and parabolic profiles, while the top cutoff in the grating tip will severely influence the antireflection performance. Meanwhile, proper length of flat region between grating features in the nonclose-packed triangular antireflection grating can have better antireflection performance than the close-packed counterpart for the same grating period and height. Such antireflection gratings with different surface profiles may offer attractive solutions to current commercial silicon solar cell, as well as organic and other semiconductor material based solar cells.