ABSTRACT
The performance of a monocrystalline silicon solar cell is determined by a variety of optical and electronic physical mechanisms. Optimization of cell performance requires finding trade-offs for the competing physical mechanisms. This chapter uses three-dimensional (3D) optical analysis and electronic transport analysis to determine optimization space for a solar cell with textured surface and point rear contacts. It discusses the behavior of different light wavelengths with several types of silicon surface roughness and finds that the best optical performance is achieved by random texture. Typically, both the front and the rear surfaces of the silicon wafer are randomly textured, but will look at different cases, with flat, regularly textured, and randomly textured pyramids. The different optical reflectivity at the rear surface for silicon– aluminum interface and with passivated silicon– nitride interface determines the amount of light retention within silicon and thus the number of optically generated carriers that can be trapped and absorbed in the solar cell.
