Related papers: Perfect light trapping in nanoscale thickness semi…
Reducing device volume is one of the key requirements for advanced nanophotonic technologies, however this demand is often at odds with designing highly absorbing elements which usually require sizeable thicknesses, such as for detector and…
Light trapping in solar cells allows for increased current and voltage, as well as reduced materials cost. It is known that in geometrical optics, a maximum 4n^2 absorption enhancement factor can be achieved by randomly texturing the…
Coating and reflecting thin films for energy harvesting purposes are interesting topics in both theoretical and experimental research. The thin film could help to enhance the absorption of the system via its specific optical properties…
Finite-difference time-domain method is employed to investigate the optical properties of semiconductor thin films patterned with circular holes. The presence of holes enhances the coupling of the incident plane wave with the thin film and…
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…
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…
Since thin-film silicon solar cells have limited optical absorption, we explore the effect of a nanostructured back reflector to recycle the unabsorbed light. As a back reflector we investigate a 3D photonic band gap crystal made from…
We show theoretically that coherent light can be completely absorbed in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional metallic nanostructure by matching the frequency and field pattern of an incident wave to that of a localized surface plasmon…
Understanding the maximal enhancement of solar absorption in semiconductor materials by light trapping promises the development of affordable solar cells. However, the conventional Lambertian limit is only valid for idealized material…
The absorption of thin hydrogenated amorphous silicon layers can be efficiently enhanced through a controlled periodic patterning. Light is trapped through coupling with photonic Bloch modes of the periodic structures, which act as an…
Absorption of microwave by metallic conductors is exclusively inefficient, though being natively broadband, due to the huge impedance mismatch between metal and free space. Reducing the thickness to ultrathin conductive film may improve the…
A theory of light reflection and transmission by an optically thin nanocomposite slab which contains randomly distributed metal nanoparticles (NPs) is developed. The underlying model takes into account the reflection of light scattered by…
We report on the fabrication of two-dimensional periodic photonic nanostructures by nanoimprint lithography and dry etching, and their integration into a 1-{\mu}m-thin mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. Thanks to the periodic…
We investigate linear resonant absorption by a dense ensemble of molecules confined to a subwavelength layer in two geometries: (i) a free-standing film in homogeneous space and (ii) the same film placed at a controlled distance from a…
Ideal absorption describes a particular means of optimizing light-matter interactions with a host of potential applications. This work presents new analytic formulas and describes semi-analytical methods for the design of electric or…
Near-perfect absorbers (NPAs) efficiently absorb visible light with a layered nanostructure that is thinner than the diffusion lengths of photogenerated charge carriers. We overcame existing limitations in fabricating their nanoparticulate…
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…
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,…
This paper presents modelled results for optical absorption in ultra-thin films of nickel, gold and silver across the solar spectrum. It is found in the case of nickel there is an optimum thickness for maximum solar absorption around…
The perfect absorption of light in subwavelength thickness layers generally relies on exotic materials, metamaterials or thick metallic gratings. Here we demonstrate that total light absorption can be achieved in ultra-thin gratings…