Related papers: Light trapping in solar cells at the extreme coupl…
The surface of thin-film solar cells can be tailored with photonic nanostructures to allow light trapping in the absorbing medium. This in turn increases the optical thickness of the film and thus enhances their absorption. Such a coherent…
We propose a back-reflecting scheme in order to enhance the maximum achievable current in one micron thick crystalline silicon solar cells. We perform 3-dimensional numerical investigations of the scattering properties of metallic…
We theoretically and numerically investigate the capability of disordered media to enhance the optical path length in dielectric slabs and augment their light absorption efficiency due to scattering. We first perform a series of Monte Carlo…
Enhancing the absorption and emission of electromagnetic waves over a broad range of wavelengths is a topic of fundamental and applied interest in photonics and energy research. In the context of light trapping in solar cells, for example,…
In this paper, we present a theoretical study on the absorption efficiency enhancement of a thin film amorphous Silicon (a-Si) photovoltaic cell over a broad spectrum of wavelengths using multiple nanoparticle arrays. The light absorption…
We experimentally demonstrate that the addition of partial lattice disorder to a thin-film micro-crystalline silicon photonic crystal results in the controlled spectral broadening of its absorption peaks to form quasi resonances; increasing…
Elaborating reliable and versatile strategies for efficient light coupling between free space and thin films is of crucial importance for new technologies in energy efficiency. Nanostructured materials have opened unprecedented…
Establishing the fundamental limit of nanophotonic light-trapping schemes is of paramount importance and is becoming increasingly urgent for current solar cell research. The standard theory of light trapping demonstrated that absorption…
The optical absorption of nanoscale thickness semiconductor films on top of light-trapping structures based on optical interference effects combined with spectrum-splitting structures is theoretically investigated. Nearly perfect absorption…
A finite element-based modal formulation of diffraction of a plane wave by an absorbing photonic crystal slab of arbitrary geometry is developed for photovoltaic applications. The semi-analytic approach allows efficient and accurate…
We introduce a limit for the strength of coupling light into the modes of solar cells. This limit depends on both a cell's thickness and its modal properties. For a cell with refractive index n and thickness d, we obtain a maximal coupling…
Thin films are preferred for high photocurrent conversion efficiency, but strong photon absorption at photon energies below the bandgap (near and shortwave infrared) typically requires thicker semiconductor layers. To address this tradeoff,…
A simple thermodynamic argument related to a (weakly absorbing) finite dielectric slab illuminated by sunlight- originally suggested by Yablonovich- leads to the conclusion that the absorption in a dielectric can at best be increased by a…
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…
We demonstrate an efficient double-layer light absorber by exciting plasmonic phase resonances. We show that the addition of grooves can cause mode splitting of the plasmonic waveguide cavity modes and all the new resonant modes exhibit…
The rigorous coupled wave approach (RCWA) was implemented to investigate optical absorption in a triple-p-i-n-junction amorphous-silicon solar cell with a 2D metallic periodically corrugated backreflector (PCBR). Both total and useful…
The effects resulting from the introduction of a controlled perturbation in a single pattern membrane on its absorption are first studied and then analyzed on the basis of band folding considerations. The interest of this approach for…
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…
Composite light-trapping structures offer a promising approach to achieving broadband absorption and high efficiency in thin-film solar cells (TFSCs) in order to accelerate sustainable energy solutions. As the leading material in thin-film…
The improvement of light absorption in Si/BeSe$_{0.41}$Te$_{0.59}$ heterostructures for solar cell applications is studied theoretically. First, using simple approaches we found that light absorption could be improved in a single…