Statistical analysis of surface nanopatterned thin film solar cells obtained by inverse optimization

This work is a statistical study of the broadband light absorption in thin film solar cells, enhanced by metallic surface nanotexturing. We consider optimum grating structures on the surface of amorphous silicon solar cells obtained by inverse optimization techniques, and use Monte Carlo techniques to analyze the joint statistics of the resulting absorption enhancement/spectra in the presence of time and structural variants including fabrication error and year around changes in the solar irradiance, as well angle of incident. We adopt yearly data for solar irradiation for individual hours. In conjunction with the data for light absorption spectra at various incident angles and Monte Carlo sampling of the fabrication error vector, we evaluate the real world performance of optimized solar cells. The resulting conclusions serve as a sensitivity/time analysis for better understanding the limits of performance and robustness of thin film cells and optimal light trapping mechanisms.