Light Trapping in Ultrathin CIGS Solar Cells withNanostructured Back Mirrors

Novel architectures for light trapping in ultrathinCu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cells are proposed and numericallyinvestigated. They are composed of a flat CIGS layer withnanostructured back mirrors made of highly reflective metals.Multi-resonant absorption is obtained for two different patternsof nanostructured mirrors. It leads to a dramatic increase in theshort-circuit current predicted for solar cells with very thin CIGSlayers. We analyze the resonance phenomena and the density ofphotogenerated carriers in the absorber. We discuss the impactof the material used for the buffer layer (CdS and ZnS) and theback mirror (Mo, Cu, Au, and Ag). We investigate various CIGSthicknesses from 100 to 500 nm, and we compare our numericalresults with experimental data taken from the literature. Wepredict a short-circuit current of Jsc = 33.6 mA/cm2 for a realisticsolar cell made of a 200-nm-thick CIGS absorber with a coppernanostructured mirror. It opens a way toward ultrathin CIGSsolar cells with potential conversion efficiencies up to 20%.