In this paper, a new method is proposed to trap sunlight in the active layer of thin film solar cells. In the proposed technique, multi-scale photonic topological insulators (PTI) realized by photonic crystals, are integrated inside the active layer of a thin film solar cell in order to trap sunlight in the cell. The trapping is realized by excitation of edge states supported by the designed topological insulator. The performance of the proposed solar cell with the topological insulator inside is investigated through full wave numerical analysis. Numerical results show that the proposed method enhances the absorption of the solar spectrum inside the cell in a wide range of wavelengths, and also for different angles of incidence. The short circuit current provided by the proposed solar cell is numerically calculated illustrating a value of 27.72 $\mathit{mA}/c{m}^2$ for a normally incident light which is 47% higher than a simple solar cell without topological insulator inside.

在本文中，提出了一种将太阳光捕获在薄膜太阳能电池活性层中的新方法。在所提出的技术中，由光子晶体实现的多尺度光子拓扑绝缘体 (PTI) 被集成在薄膜太阳能电池的有源层内，以便将太阳光捕获在电池中。捕获是通过激发由设计的拓扑绝缘体支持的边缘状态来实现的。通过全波数值分析研究了所提出的具有内部拓扑绝缘体的太阳能电池的性能。数值结果表明，所提出的方法增强了电池内太阳光谱在很宽的波长范围内以及不同入射角的吸收。所提出的太阳能电池提供的短路电流经过数值计算，说明值为 27.72$\mathit{嘛}/C{米}^2$ 对于正常入射光，比内部没有拓扑绝缘体的简单太阳能电池高 47%。