Random rough textures can increase the absorbing efficiency of solar cells by trapping the optical light and increasing the optical path of photons, and in turn increases the effectiveness of solar panels.

       In this talk, I will briefly describe the mechanism and the mathematical modeling of thin film solar cells to start with. Then I will describe how to use mathematical shape control methods to optimally design of random rough surfaces in thin-film solar cells. Finally I will use numerical experiments to show that optimally obtained random textures yield an enormous absorption enhancement, and thus increase the solar panel's energy efficiency. In addition, I will show how the stochastic gradient descent method can significantly save the computing cost.