Ultrathin CIGS Solar Cells with Metallic Nanoparticles

26th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 2863-2866
Conventional light trapping techniques are inefficient at the sub-wavelength scale. This is one of the main limitation for the thickness reduction of thin-film solar cells. We propose a novel architecture for broadband light absorption in a 100 nm-thick CIGS active layer. We show that this ultra-thin CIGS solar cell could preserve a constant short-circuit current while decreasing the active layer thickness by at least one order of magnitude. We focus on numerical optimisation to achieve a good short-circuit current with tunable multiple resonances. Fabrication issues are discussed.