Efficiency enhancement of amorphous-silicon tandem solar cell due to multiple surface-plasmon-polariton waves

The reflectances of a thin-film solar cell were computed, using the rigorous coupled-wave approach, as functions of the angle of incidence and the free-space wavelength for illumination by linearly polarized plane waves. The metallic back-reflector was taken to be periodically corrugated and the solar cell was considered to be a tandem solar cell made of amorphous-silicon alloys. Low-reflectance bands in the reflectance spectrums were correlated with the solutions of the underlying canonical boundary-value problem to delineate the excitation of surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves. The total reflectance was lowered in the near-infrared spectral regime when multiple SPP waves of both linear polarization states were excited, thereby enhancing the absorption of light.

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