With the consideration of photon recycling effect, the efficiency limit of methylammonium lead iodide (CH3NH3PbI3) perovskite solar cells is predicted by a detailed balance model. To obtain convincing predictions, both AM 1.5 spectrum of Sun and experimentally measured complex refractive index of perovskite material are employed in the detailed balance model. The roles of light trapping and angular restriction in improving the maximal output power of thin-film perovskite solar cells are also clarified. The efficiency limit of perovskite cells (without the angular restriction) is about 31%, which approaches to Shockley-Queisser limit (33%) achievable by gallium arsenide (GaAs) cells. Moreover, the Shockley-Queisser limit could be reached with a 200 nm-thick perovskite solar cell, through integrating a wavelength-dependent angular-restriction design with a textured light-trapping structure. Additionally, the influence of the trap-assisted nonradiative recombination on the device efficiency is investigated. The work is fundamentally important to high-performance perovskite photovoltaics.

The enhancement of the power conversion efficiency (PCE), and subsequent reduction of cost, of light emitting diodes (LEDs) is of crucial importance in the current lightening market. For this reason, we propose here a PCE-enhanced LED architecture, based on a partially-reflecting metasurface cavity (PRMC) structure. This structure simultaneously enhances the light extraction efficiency (LEE) and the spontaneous emission rate (SER) of the LED by enforcing the emitted light to radiate perpendicularly to the device, so as to suppress wave trapping and enhance field confinement near the emitter, while ensuring cavity resonance matching and maximal constructive field interference. The PRMC structure is designed using a recent surface susceptibility metasurface synthesis technique. A PRMC blue LED design is presented and demonstrated by full-wave simulation to provide LEE and SER enhancements by factors 4.0 and 1.9, respectively, which correspond to PCE enhancement factors of 6.2, 5.2 and 4.5 for IQEs of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75, respectively, suggesting that the PRMC concept has a promising potential in LED technology. 7, 948-957 (2013). 14. D. Lu, J. J. Kan, E. E. Fullerton, and Z. Liu, "Enhancing spontaneous emission rates of molecules using nanopatterned multilayer hyperbolic metamaterials," Nat. Nanotechnol. 9, 48-53 (2014). 15. L. Ferrari, D. Lu, D. Lepage, and Z. Liu, "Enhanced spontaneous emission inside hyperbolic metamaterials,"

Light blocking induced by top patterned nanostructures is a fundamental limit in solar cells absorption. Here we propose an interstitial lattice patterned organic solar cell which can improve the light blocking of traditional square lattice and achieve broadband absorption enhancement. Compared to square lattice design, the plasmonic mode couplings between individual metallic nanoparticles in the interstitial lattice are more versatile and much stronger. Moreover, plasmonic modes can couple to the guided modes, resulting in large enhancement factor at some wavelengths. The interstitial lattice concept will be a broad interest and great help for high-performance photovoltaics. V

No abstract

No abstract