Decoupled front/back dielectric textures for flat ultra-thin c-Si solar cells

The optical analysis of optically-textured and electrically-flat ultra-thin crystalline silicon (c-Si) slabs is presented. These slabs were endowed with decoupled front titanium-dioxide (TiO2) / back silicon-dioxide (SiO2) dielectric textures and were studied as function of two types of back reflectors: standard silver (Ag) and dielectric modulated distributed Bragg reflector (MDBR). The optical performance of such systems was compared to that of state-of-the-art flat c-Si slabs endowed with so-called front Mie resonators and to those of similar optical systems still endowed with the same back reflectors and decoupled front/back texturing but based on textured c-Si and dielectric coatings (front TiO2 and back SiO2). Our optimized front dielectric textured design on 2-µm thick flat c-Si slab with MDBR resulted in more photo-generated current density in c-Si with respect to the same optical system but featuring state-of-the-art Mie resonators ( + 6.4%), mainly due to an improved light in-coupling between 400 and 700 nm and light scattering between 700 and 1050 nm. On the other hand, the adoption of textured dielectric layers resulted in less photo-generated current density in c-Si up to −20.6% with respect to textured c-Si, depending on the type of back reflector taken into account.