Application of a new ray tracing framework to the analysis of extended regions in Si solar cell modules

Abstract

While ray tracing of solar cells was established decades ago, ray tracing of entire modules has met obstacles, mainly because module optics are affected by geometric structures varying over a large scale of dimensions. In this paper, we introduce a ray tracing framework that is based on a modular structure made up of separate plugins. While existing plugins can be used for common effects such as light sources, absorption in materials, etc., specialized plug-ins can be written by users to handle problem-specific properties. We demonstrate the functionality of our approach by ray tracing a test module containing 9 crystalline Si solar cells. Good agreement between light-beam induced current (LBIC) measurements and ray tracing is achieved.