The sawtooth coverslide - A new means of coupling light into solar cells

In recent years major improvements have been made in silicon solar cell output by increasing the percent of incident light that actually penetrates into the active volume of the cell through the use of shallow junctions, p/sup +/ back contacts, new antireflection coatings, and etched front surfaces. A new coverslide design described herein reduces the reflection from coverslide surfaces and redirects the light to fall only between the grids, thus increasing the effective area of the cell. With all of these improvements combined, the light collection capability of a solar cell assembly is close to the maximum value possible without using external light concentrators.