Biomimetic antireflective AlInP nanostructures fabricated by lithography-free method for solar cell applications

We present biomimetic antireflective AlInP nanostructures fabricated by inductively coupled plasma etching using Ag etch masks, which were easily formed by spin-coating Ag ink and subsequent sintering process on a hotplate without any lithography process and complicated equipments, for compound semiconductor based solar cell applications. This lithography-free technique is a simple, cost-effective, and high throughput method. The fabricated AlInP nanostructures demonstrated drastically reduced the hemispherical reflectance and solar-weighted reflectance (SWR) compared to that of bulk AlInP in the wavelength range of 300-870 nm. The incident angle-dependent SWR of the AlInP nanostructures remained below 4% up to an incident angle of 50°. Therefore, the biomimetic antireflective AlInP nanostructures fabricated by using the lithography-free method hold great potential for use in compound semiconductor based solar cell applications.