Multilayer solar cell waveguide structures containing metamaterials

Abstract

Multilayer antireflection coating structures made from silicon and metamaterials are designed and investigated using the Transfer Matrix Method (TMM). The Transfer Matrix Method is a very useful algorithm for the analysis of periodic structures. We investigate in this paper two anti-reflection coating structures for silicon solar cells with a metamaterial film layer. In the first structure, the metamaterial film layer is sandwiched between a semi-infinite glass cover layer and a semi-infinite silicon substrate layer. The second structure consists of a four layers, a pair of metamaterial-dielectric layer with opposite real part of refractive indices, is placed between the two semi-infinite cover and substrate. We have simulated the absorptivity property of the structures for adjustable thicknesses by using MAPLE software. The absorptivity of the structures achieves greater than 80% for incident electromagnetic wave of transverse …