The optical losses associated with the reflectance of incident radiation are among the most important factors limiting the efficiency of a solar cell. Therefore, photovoltaic cells normally require special surface structures or materials, which can reduce reflectance. In this study, nano-scale textured structures with anti-reflection properties were successfully formed on silicon. The surface of sicon wafer was etched by the inductively coupled plasma process using the gaseous mixture of SF6+O2. We demonstrate that the reflection characteristic has significantly reduced by ∼0% compared with the flat surface. As a result, the power efficiency Pmax of the nano-scale textured silicon solar cell were enhanced up to 20%, which can be ascribed primarily to the improved light trapping in the proposed nano-scale texturing.
