We investigate the concept of nanoparticle-based solar cells composed of a silicon nanoparticle stack acting as efficient light trapping absorbers to achieve novel inorganic configurations for ultrathin photovoltaics. We study the potential of using these inherently nanotextured structures in enhancing the light absorption. For this, a detailed optical analysis is performed to demonstrate the dependency of the typical structure to physical parameters including the number of particle layers, lattice structure and angle of incidence; these behavior are then compared with conventional silicon solar cells. We propose various configurations to apply these sub-micron particles as a p-n junction solar cell. We also compute the electrical performance of selected configurations. In doing so, key issues including the effect of contact points between nanoparticles and impact of loss are addressed. In the end, we show how SiO2 nanoparticles on top of the cell structure can enhance the photocurrent. The appropriate range of SiO2 particle size is also obtained for the typical cell structures.