Journal ArticleDOI
Photonic crystal based back reflectors for light management and enhanced absorption in amorphous silicon solar cells
TLDR
In this article, the authors fabricated metallic photonic crystal back-reflectors using photolithography and reactive-ion etching and deposited them in a-Si:H solar cells.Abstract:
Photonic crystal back-reflectors offer enhanced optical absorption in thin-film solar cells, without undesirable losses. We fabricated metallic photonic crystal back-reflectors using photolithography and reactive-ion etching and deposited a-Si:H solar cells. The photonic crystal has triangular lattice symmetry, a pitch of 760 nm, and was designed with rigorous simulations. Scanning electron microscopy demonstrates excellent long range periodicity and conformal a-Si:H growth. The average light absorption increases by 7%, relative to a flat reference device, with an enhancement factor approaching 6 at near-infrared wavelengths. The photonic crystal back reflector strongly diffracts light and increases optical path lengths of solar photons.read more
Citations
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A photonic-plasmonic structure for enhancing light absorption in thin film solar cells
Joydeep Bhattacharya,Nayan Chakravarty,Sambit Pattnaik,W. Dennis Slafer,Rana Biswas,Vikram L. Dalal +5 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a photonic-plasmonic nanostructure was proposed to enhance the absorption of long-wavelength photons in thin-film silicon solar cells, with the promise of exceeding the classical 4n2 limit for enhancement.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coherent light trapping in thin-film photovoltaics
TL;DR: In this article, various strategies for coherent light trapping in thin-film solar cells, including photonic crystals, metal nanostructures, and multilayer stacks, are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nanoplasmonics: a frontier of photovoltaic solar cells
Min Gu,Zi Ouyang,Baohua Jia,Nicholas Stokes,Xi Chen,Narges F. Fahim,Xiangping Li,Michael James Ventura,Zhengrong Shi +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the recent progress of plasmonic solar cells including the fundamental mechanisms, material fabrication, theoretical modelling and emerging directions with a distinct emphasis on solutions tackling the above-mentioned challenges for industrial relevant applications.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nano-crystalline silicon solar cell architecture with absorption at the classical 4n 2 limit
Rana Biswas,Chun Xu +1 more
TL;DR: A periodically patterned conformal photonic-plasmonic crystal based solar architecture for a nano-crystalline silicon solar cell, through rigorous scattering matrix simulations, which shows good absorption and maximal current results.
References
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Book
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TL;DR: In this article, the p-n junction Monocrystalline solar cells and thin film solar cells managing light over the limit: Strategies for Higher Efficiency are discussed. And the basic principles of PV Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors Generation and Recombination Junctions Analysis of the P-n Junction Mon-Cylindrical Solar Cells
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Statistical ray optics.
TL;DR: In this paper, a statistical approach is taken toward the ray optics of optical media with complicated nonspherical and nonplanar surface shapes, where the light in such a medium will tend to be randomized in direction and of 2n2(x) times greater intensity than the externally incident light, where n(x), is the local index of refraction.
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Improving thin-film crystalline silicon solar cell efficiencies with photonic crystals
TL;DR: Here, a photonic crystal-based light-trapping approach is analyzed and compared to previous approaches for c-Si thin film solar cells, which gives rise to weak absorption of one-third of usable solar photons.
Journal ArticleDOI
Analytical model for the optical functions of amorphous semiconductors from the near-infrared to ultraviolet: Applications in thin film photovoltaics
Andre S. Ferlauto,G.M. Ferreira,Joshua M. Pearce,C.R. Wronski,Robert W. Collins,Xunming Deng,Gautam Ganguly +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a Kramers-Kronig consistent analytical expression was developed to fit the measured optical functions of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) based alloys, i.e., the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function (e1,e2) versus photon energy E for the alloys.
Journal ArticleDOI
Photonic crystal enhanced light-trapping in thin film solar cells
Dayu Zhou,Rana Biswas +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, photonic crystals were utilized to simulate enhanced light-trapping in a-Si:H thin-film solar cells, where a one dimensional photonic crystal or distributed Bragg reflector with alternating dielectric layers acts as low loss backreflector.