Parasitic absorption effects in metallic back reflectors with texture

Abstract

We investigate light scattering interface textures for absorption enhancement in solar cells. If metallic films are used as back electrode or reflector, texturing mediates coupling to surface plasmon resonances which can lead to undesired absorption effects. These can be moved into uncritical spectral regions by using periodic structures with properly engineered corrugation. We use a reference structure consisting of a 1D sinusoidal grating which offers the additional advantage of resolving polarization effects of the incident light. Measured reflection data is compared with modelling results, and the suitability of different datasets in the literature is discussed.