Bérengère Frouin started her PhD on ultrathin solar cells in October 2019 just after graduating from Telecom Physique Strasbourg in the photonic section, with a double degree in photonics for nanoscience from the University of Strasbourg.
Because of cost and material scarcity, reducing the absorber thickness become more and more important in photovoltaics. To compensate for low absorption, the sunlit team has developed light-trapping strategies based on multiresonant absorption. My research project has several goals: further improvement of our record 20%-efficient GaAs solar cells with an absorber thickness of only 200nm, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer ISE, and extension of these results to low-cost thin-film solar cells based on CIGS and CdTe polycristalline semiconductors.