The annual energy yield of mono- and bifacial silicon heterojunction solar modules with high-index dielectric nanodisk arrays as anti-reflective and light trapping structures

While various nanophotonic structures applicable to relatively thin crystalline silicon-based solar cells were proposed to ensure effective light in-coupling and light trapping in the absorber, it is of great importance to evaluate their performance on the solar module level under realistic irradiation conditions. Here, we analyze the annual energy yield of relatively thin heterojunction (HJT) solar module architectures when optimized anti-reflective and light trapping titanium dioxide (TiO$_2$) nanodisk square arrays are applied on the front and rear cell interfaces. Our numerical study shows that upon reducing crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer thickness, the relative increase of the annual energy yield can go up to 11.0 %$_text{rel}$ and 43.0 %$_text{rel}$ for mono- and bifacial solar modules, respectively, when compared to the reference modules with flat optimized anti-reflective coatings of HJT solar cells.