Related papers: Angular constraint on light-trapping absorption en…
Power-conversion efficiency is a critical factor for the wider adoption of solar-cell modules. Thin-film solar cells are cheap and easy to manufacture, but their efficiencies are low compared to crystalline-silicon solar cells and need to…
Light absorption at the boundary of indirect-band-gap and direct-forbidden gap semiconductors is analyzed. It is found that the possibility of the electron momentum nonconservation at the interface leads to essential enhancement of…
Organic solar cells (OSCs) are uniquely suited for semitransparent applications due to their adjustable absorption spectrum. However, most high-performance semitransparent cells reported to date are based on materials that have shown high…
One-dimensional lamellar gratings allow a particularly efficient way for solving Maxwell's equations by expanding the electromagnetic field in the basis of exact eigenmodes of the Helmholtz equation. Then, the solution can be expressed…
We report on the role of plasmonic resonances in determining the delicate balance between scattering and absorption of light in nanometric particle arrays applied to the front surface of solar cells. Strong parasitic absorption is shown to…
In this article, we investigate the effect of prolonged light exposure on silicon heterojunction solar cells. We show that, although light exposure systematicallyimproves solar cell efficiency in the case of devices using intrinsic and…
Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) pursue the increase in efficiency by absorbing below-bandgap energy photons while preserving the output voltage. Experimental IBSCs based on quantum dots have already demonstrated that both…
Recently, significant progress in the development of III-V/Si dual-junction solar cells has been achieved. This not only boosts the efficiency of Si-based photovoltaic solar cells, but also offers the possibility of highly efficient green…
We calculate the optical conductivity of superconductors in the strong-coupling limit. In this anomalous limit the typical energy scale is set by the coupling energy, and other energy scales such as the energy of the bosons mediating the…
Light trapping is a constant pursuit in photonics because of its importance in science and technology. Many mechanisms have been explored, including the use of mirrors made of materials or structures that forbid outgoing waves, and bound…
Based on fundamental properties of light scattering by a particle we reveal the existence of the ultimate upper limit for the light absorption by any partial mode. First, we obtain this result for scattering of a plane wave by a symmetric…
We derive and discuss general physical bounds on the electromagnetic scattering and absorption of passive structures. Our theory, based on passivity and power conservation, quantifies the minimum and maximum allowed scattering for an object…
Colored solar cells suffer from lower efficiency due to reflection and absorption losses by coatings. By studying different types of coatings on solar cells, the spectrum parameters impacting the solar cell efficiency were identified. A…
Absorbed sunlight in a solar cell produces electrons and holes. But, at the open circuit condition, the carriers have no place to go. They build up in density and, ideally, they emit external fluorescence that exactly balances the incoming…
The photosensitivity of silicon is inherently very low in the visible electromagnetic spectrum, and it drops rapidly beyond 800 nm in near-infrared wavelengths. Herein, we have experimentally demonstrated a technique utilizing…
In this paper, we calculate the material specific absorption accurately using a modal method by determining the integral of the Poynting vector around the boundary of a specific material. Given that the accuracy of our method is only…
In the strongly damped regime, the convective gain rate for stimulated scatter varies inversely with the plasma wave damping rate. Electron trapping effects reduce the damping but also lead to loss of resonance for large enough amplitude…
Ultrathin solar cells reduce material usage and allow the use of lower-quality materials thanks to their one order of magnitude smaller thickness than their conventional counterparts. However, efficient photonic light-trapping is required…
In a previous article we suggested a method to overcome the diffraction limit behind a telescope. We refer to theory and recent numerical simulations, and test whether it is indeed possible to use photon amplification to enhance the angular…
Hot-carrier solar cells are envisioned to utilize energy filtering to extract power from photogenerated electron-hole pairs before they thermalize with the lattice, and thus potentially offer higher power conversion efficiency compared to…