Unconventional routes to exploit silicon can create novel engineering designs, device functionalities, and cost structures, each with significant practical values in the next generation photovoltaics. In particular, ultrathin forms of single-crystalline silicon derived from wafer-based source materials represent an excellent materials building block for high-efficiency, low cost solar cells due to many unique advantages such as superior materials properties, reduced materials consumption, relaxed requirements of materials purity, and ability to form large area modules on unlimited choices of substrates. This talk will provide an overview of recent advances in materials design and fabrication pathways for ultrathin microscale single-crystalline silicon solar cells and their unusual format module designs, with a special emphasis on strategies for maximizing absorption of longer wavelength photons to improve the performance of optically thin solar cells and flexible solar modules, including composite photovoltaic systems incorporating nanoscale photon management with programmable surface nanostructures of silicon as well as plasmonically amplified spectral upconversion via heterogeneously integrated nanostructured metallic reflectors.

High-performance, microscale silicon photovoltaics enabled with nanoscale photon management and spectral modification

251st National Meeting (2016)

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