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Journal ArticleDOI

Light management for photovoltaics using high-index nanostructures.

TLDR
This Review discusses some of the recent developments in the design and implementation of such photonic elements in thin-film photovoltaic cells, including nanoscale wires, particles and voids.
Abstract
High-performance photovoltaic cells use semiconductors to convert sunlight into clean electrical power, and transparent dielectrics or conductive oxides as antireflection coatings. A common feature of these materials is their high refractive index. Whereas high-index materials in a planar form tend to produce a strong, undesired reflection of sunlight, high-index nanostructures afford new ways to manipulate light at a subwavelength scale. For example, nanoscale wires, particles and voids support strong optical resonances that can enhance and effectively control light absorption and scattering processes. As such, they provide ideal building blocks for novel, broadband antireflection coatings, light-trapping layers and super-absorbing films. This Review discusses some of the recent developments in the design and implementation of such photonic elements in thin-film photovoltaic cells.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Optically resonant dielectric nanostructures

TL;DR: How high-index dielectric nanoparticles can offer a substitute for plasmonic nanoparticle structures, providing a highly flexible and low-loss route to the manipulation of light at the nanoscale is reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Photovoltaic materials: Present efficiencies and future challenges

TL;DR: A comprehensively and systematically review the leading candidate materials, present the limitations of each system, and analyze how these limitations can be overcome and overall cell performance improved.
Journal ArticleDOI

High-Q Supercavity Modes in Subwavelength Dielectric Resonators.

TL;DR: It is revealed that isolated subwavelength dielectric resonators support states with giant Q-factors similar to bound states in the continuum formed via destructive interference between strongly coupled eigenmodes and characterized by singularities of the Fano parameters.
Journal ArticleDOI

Enhanced Raman Scattering with Dielectrics.

TL;DR: This review provides a broad analysis of SERS with dielectrics, encompassing different optical phenomena at the basis of the Raman scattering enhancement and introducing future challenges for light harvesting, vibrational spectroscopy, imaging, and sensing.
References
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Book

Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles

TL;DR: In this paper, a Potpourri of Particles is used to describe surface modes in small Particles and the Angular Dependence of Scattering is shown to be a function of the size of the particles.
Journal ArticleDOI

Detailed Balance Limit of Efficiency of p‐n Junction Solar Cells

TL;DR: In this article, an upper theoretical limit for the efficiency of p−n junction solar energy converters, called the detailed balance limit of efficiency, has been calculated for an ideal case in which the only recombination mechanism of holeelectron pairs is radiative as required by the principle of detailed balance.
Journal ArticleDOI

Plasmonics for improved photovoltaic devices

TL;DR: Recent advances at the intersection of plasmonics and photovoltaics are surveyed and an outlook on the future of solar cells based on these principles is offered.
Journal ArticleDOI

Single-nanowire electrically driven lasers

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the feasibility of achieving electrically driven lasing from individual nanowires and show that these structures can function as Fabry-Perot optical cavities with mode spacing inversely related to the nanowire length.
Journal ArticleDOI

Light Trapping in Silicon Nanowire Solar Cells

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that ordered arrays of silicon nanowires increase the path length of incident solar radiation by up to a factor of 73, which is above the randomized scattering (Lambertian) limit and is superior to other light-trapping methods.
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