Related papers: Solar Superabsorption of Semiconductor Materials
The Shockley-Queisser limit is one of the most fundamental results in the field of photovoltaics. Based on the principle of detailed balance, it defines an upper limit for a single junction solar cell that uses an absorber material with a…
Random surface texturing of an optically-thick film to increase the path length of scattered light rays, first proposed nearly thirty years ago, has thus far remained the most effective approach for photon absorption over the widest set of…
When the sulfur element is hyperdoped into crystalline silicon to a supersaturated density of 1020 cm-3, it can enhance the sub-bandgap light absorption of silicon from 0 to 70%, with the antireflection of surface dome structures. On the…
Simulations of metal nanopatterns embedded in a thin photovoltaic absorber show significantly enhanced absorbance within the semiconductor, with a more than 300% increase for {\lambda} = 800 nm. Integrating with AM1.5 solar irradiation,…
Almost 60 years ago Dicke introduced the term superradiance to describe a signature quantum effect: N atoms can collectively emit light at a rate proportional to N^2. Even for moderate N this represents a significant increase over the…
Absorption of electromagnetic energy by a material is a phenomenon that underlies many applied problems, including molecular sensing, photocurrent generation and photodetection. Commonly, the incident energy is delivered to the system…
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…
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…
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…
Using the idea of transformation optics, we propose a metamaterial device that serves as a frequency-selective super-absorber, which consists of an absorbing core material coated with a shell of isotropic double negative metamaterial. For a…
Photovoltaics has two main processes: Optical absorption and power conversion. In photosynthesis, the two equivalent processes are optical absorption and chemical conversion. Whereas in the latter, the two processes are carried out by…
Solar arrays are the primary energy source of the satellite. In this paper, a metamaterial absorber for solar arrays with simultaneous high optical transparency and broadband microwave absorption is presented. By tailoring the reflection…
Reabsorption, the multiple scattering of spontaneously emitted photons in optically thick gases, is a major limitation to efficient optical pumping and laser cooling in ultracold gases. We report mitigation of reabsorption using spatial and…
The realization of a semiconductor near-unity absorber in the infrared will provide new capabilities to transform applications in sensing, health, imaging, and quantum information science, especially where portability is required.…
We propose herein a method of material-structure integrated design for broadband absorption of dielectric metamaterial, which is achieved by combination of genetic algorithm and simulation platform. A multi-layered metamaterial absorber…
Because of its low-cost, silicon is the standard material for photovoltaic conversion. Yet, its band-edge absorption spectrum is narrower than the spectrum of the solar radiation, which reduces its conversion efficiency. In this paper, it…
We present a first-principles study of semiconducting carbon nanotubes adsorbed on the unpassivated Si(100) surface. We have found metallicity for the combined system caused by n-doping of the silicon slab representing the surface by the…
We report on very high enhancement of thin layer's absorption through band-engineering of a photonic crystal structure. We realized amorphous silicon (aSi) photonic crystals, where slow light modes improve absorption efficiency. We show…
Leptophilic sub-MeV spin-1 dark matter (DM) can be converted into a photon via inelastic scattering with a free electron or absorption by a neutral hydrogen atom in the primordial plasma. We study for the first time the impact of the energy…
Metasurface based super absorbers exhibit near unity absorbance. While the absorption peak can be tuned by the geometry/size of the sub-wavelength resonator, broadband absorption can be obtained by placing multiple resonators of various…