The annual energy yield of mono- and bifacial silicon heterojunction solar modules with high-index dielectric nanodisk arrays as anti-reflective and light trapping structures

Abstract

While various nanophotonic structures applicable to relatively thin crystalline silicon-based solar cells were proposed to ensure effective light in-coupling and light trapping in the absorber, it is of great importance to evaluate their performance on the 1 ar X iv :2 10 6. 11 82 0v 1 [ ph ys ic s. op tic s] 2 2 Ju n 20 21 solar module level under realistic irradiation conditions. Here, we analyze the annual energy yield of relatively thin heterojunction (HJT) solar module architectures when optimized anti-reflective and light trapping titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanodisk square arrays are applied on the front and rear cell interfaces. Our numerical study shows that upon reducing crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer thickness, the relative increase of the annual energy yield can go up to 11.0 %rel and 43.0 %rel for monoand bifacial solar modules, respectively, when compared to the reference modules with flat optimized anti-reflective coatings of HJT solar cells.