Abstract
Crystalline silicon (c-Si) remains the most commonly used material for photovoltaic (PV) cells in the current commercial solar cells market. However, current technology requires "thick" silicon due to the relative weak absorption of Si in the solar spectrum. We demonstrate several CMOS compatible fabrication techniques including dry etch, wet etch and their combination to create different photon trapping micro/nanostructures on very thin c-silicon surface for light harvesting of PVs. Both, the simulation and experimental results show that these photon trapping structures are responsible for the enhancement of the visible light absorption which leads to improved efficiency of the PVs. Different designs of micro/ nanostructures via different fabrication techniques are correlated with the efficiencies of the PVs. Our method can also drastically reduce the thickness of the c-Si PVs, and has great potential to reduce the cost, and lead to highly efficient and flexible PVs.