Comparing single-, double- and triple-layer anti-reflection coatings for ultra-low reflectance in silicon heterojunction solar cells

Abstract To increase the efficiency of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells (SCs), it is paramount to enhance the utilization of sunlight by light management. In this study, the dependences of weighted reflectance and thus generation current (J G) for SHJ SCs on different anti-reflective structures are displayed by OPAL2 simulation tool. According to this, SiN x and SiO2 films are deposited on front of indium tin oxide (ITO) as multilayer anti-reflection coatings (ARCs). It is demonstrated experimentally that the photovoltaic performance of SHJ SCs can be significantly improved by multilayer ARCs. Especially, with 90/21/40 nm SiO2/SiN x /ITO anti-reflective layer structure, the reflectance of SHJ SC is reduced as low as 0.94%, and the current density is shown to be increased by 4.34% compared to the common SCs. This work shows a promising and cost-effective way to achieve higher light utilization and thus promotes photovoltaic characteristics for SHJ SCs.