Broadband omnidirectional anti-reflection property of V-groove textured silicon

Abstract Omnidirectional silicon solar cells with an outstanding anti-reflection property over a broad angular range of incident light show great potential for application in the photovoltaic industry. Many studies have been carried out to investigate the omnidirectional anti-reflection properties of different silicon textured structures. However, the omnidirectional anti-reflection property of the V-groove textured silicon has not been reported, even though the V-groove structure is also one of most frequently used anti-reflective structures for silicon solar cells. In this research, ray tracing simulation is utilized to analyze and validate the omnidirectionality of a micron-sized silicon V-groove structure. In addition, in consideration of the previous complicated fabrication methods of V-groove structure, a brand new fabrication method for the V-groove texturization onto diamond-wire-sawn monocrystalline silicon wafers through copper-assisted chemical etching is presented. Consistent with the simulations, the experimental results similarly indicate that the V-groove textured silicon not only possesses light absorption ability that is comparable to the common random pyramid structure but also exhibits an unexpected excellent omnidirectional anti-reflection property over a wide range of incident angles, demonstrating the great potential for the fabrication of omnidirectional silicon solar cells.