Broadband Light‐Trapping Enhancement in an Ultrathin Film a‐Si Absorber Using Whispering Gallery Modes and Guided Wave Modes with Dielectric Surface‐Textured Structures

Kang, Gumin; Park, Haesung; Shin, Dong Hoon; Baek, Seung Yon; Choi, Munseok; Yu, Deshuang; Kim, Kyoungsik; Padilla, Willie J.

doi:10.1002/adma.201204596

Cited by 60 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…4(d), and overall, the ultra-broadband absorption with high average absorptivity (above 90%) is maintained even at large incident angles of up to 50°. This is also a significant achievement for our random microstructure absorber, owing to the nature of the localized resonances and the corresponding coupled modes excited in the plasmonic-photonic microstructure3940.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Colloidal microspheres and their corresponding arrays are effective platforms to realize light-trapping by excitations of the localized resonances and coupled guided modes383940. Prepared through two-dimensional (2D) colloidal crystal templating, spherical micro-void arrays buried in metal show omnidirectional high absorption that relies on the excitation of localized surface plasmon resonances4142.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Ultra-broadband Tunable Resonant Light Trapping in a Two-dimensional Randomly Microstructured Plasmonic-photonic Absorber

Liu

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Recently, techniques involving random patterns have made it possible to control the light trapping of microstructures over broad spectral and angular ranges, which provides a powerful approach for photon management in energy efficiency technologies. Here, we demonstrate a simple method to create a wideband near-unity light absorber by introducing a dense and random pattern of metal-capped monodispersed dielectric microspheres onto an opaque metal film; the absorber works due to the excitation of multiple optical and plasmonic resonant modes. To further expand the absorption bandwidth, two different-sized metal-capped dielectric microspheres were integrated into a densely packed monolayer on a metal back-reflector. This proposed ultra-broadband plasmonic-photonic super absorber demonstrates desirable optical trapping in dielectric region and slight dispersion over a large incident angle range. Without any effort to strictly control the spatial arrangement of the resonant elements, our absorber, which is based on a simple self-assembly process, has the critical merits of high reproducibility and scalability and represents a viable strategy for efficient energy technologies.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

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confidence: 99%

Ultra-broadband Tunable Resonant Light Trapping in a Two-dimensional Randomly Microstructured Plasmonic-photonic Absorber

Liu

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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“…The discrete enhancement peak was ascribed to the WGM coupling into the a-Si layer. Experimental observation of broadband light trapping enhancement by placing periodic dielectric surface-textured structures embedding closely packed polystyrene (PS) nanospheres on top of a flat ultrathin a-Si absorber (100 nm) was also demonstrated as shown in Figure 3C [67]. By embedding the nanospheres, the absorption of the a-Si layer increased from 23.8% to 39.9% due to the wave guiding of the light inside the PMMA embedding layer and the coupling between free space light to the resonant WGMs.…”

Section: Enhancement From Dielectric Nanoparticlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanophotonics silicon solar cells: status and future challenges

Jia

2015

Nanotechnology Reviews

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Light management plays an important role in high-performance solar cells. Nanostructures that could effectively trap light offer great potential in improving the conversion efficiency of solar cells with much reduced material usage. Developing low-cost and large-scale nanostructures integratable with solar cells, thus, promises new solutions for high efficiency and low-cost solar energy harvesting. In this paper, we review the exciting progress in this field, in particular, in the market, dominating silicon solar cells and pointing out challenges and future trends.

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“…[59] In practical application, a periodic dielectric nanosphere array on top of a ultra-thin film a-Si absorbing layer improved the weighted absorption, from 23.8% to 39.9%, compared to a bare a-Si film. [60] The enhanced absorption was attributed to the coupling of the incident light with the lateral propagating modes, in which optical confinement was provided by the contrast of the refractive index between the quantum-well-like layers of the resonant sphere array, active material, and back contact stacked in the vertical direction. Although the resonant optical modes in the active layer of a solar cell can be modified to match the peak energy emission wavelength of sunlight by altering the materials or their geometries, achieving broadband absorption enhancement is still challenging due to the discrete nature of resonant modes.…”

Section: Incorporation Of Resonatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Highly Efficient Nanostructured Solar Cells Using Concurrent Electrical and Optical Design

Wang

2017

Advanced Energy Materials

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For example, the multiple exciton generation (MEG) effect, observed in quantum dots (QDs), could have the potential to boost the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit from 33.7% to 44.0%. [4,5] Nanostructured absorbers, featuring subwavelength features, can achieve an absorption enhancement factor higher than the conventional ray-optic limit across a broadband range of wavelengths, which opens an entirely new way of designing highly efficient nanostructured solar cells. [6,7] Meanwhile, the utilization of nanostructures can improve carrier collection by promoting the separation of photogenerated carriers and shortening the diffusion length of charge carriers using core-shell architectures. [8] However, despite the advantages of nanostructures, at present the efficiency of these solar cells remains lower than that of first-and second-generation devices. Compared with commercially available Si wafer photovoltaics, whose energy conversion efficiency can reach 25.6%, the record energy conversion efficiency of a nanostructured Si solar cell is only 22.1%, which is still far from the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit of 32.0%. [9,10] This limited performance is due to the fact that most nanostructures bring accompanying optical or electrical losses to solar cells (Figure 1). [11][12][13][14][15] In fact, most nano-based solar cells have relatively low open-circuit voltages (V OC ) and a disproportionate enhancement of the short-circuit current density (J SC ) compared to the absorption enhancement via light-trapping nanostructures. Therefore, in order to avoid the counterbalance of optical and electrical gains by the accompanying losses associated with nanomaterials, it is necessary to look beyond singularly focused optical or electrical promotion schemes, and instead shift toward the concurrent design of electrical and optical properties using a combined perspective to achieve highly efficient nanostructured solar cells.Thus far, many excellent reviews have summarized different photon management or light-harvesting schemes with the use of nanostructures. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] These authors point out that important work remains to ensure that improved optical absorption does not come at the sacrifice of the device's electrical properties. [16,17,[19][20][21][22][23][24] However, there have been few reviews that propose a solution for how to overcome this challenge. Recently, there has been considerable effort to increase both light absorption and the photogenerated carrier collection Recent technological advances in conventional planar and microstructured solar cell architectures have significantly boosted the efficiencies of these devices near the corresponding theoretical values. Nanomaterials and nano structures have promising potential to push the theoretical limits of solar cell efficiency even higher using the intrinsic advantages associated with these materials, including efficient photon management, rapid charge transfer, and short charge collection distances. However, at present the efficiency of...

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Broadband Light‐Trapping Enhancement in an Ultrathin Film a‐Si Absorber Using Whispering Gallery Modes and Guided Wave Modes with Dielectric Surface‐Textured Structures

Cited by 60 publications

References 30 publications

Ultra-broadband Tunable Resonant Light Trapping in a Two-dimensional Randomly Microstructured Plasmonic-photonic Absorber

Ultra-broadband Tunable Resonant Light Trapping in a Two-dimensional Randomly Microstructured Plasmonic-photonic Absorber

Nanophotonics silicon solar cells: status and future challenges

Toward Highly Efficient Nanostructured Solar Cells Using Concurrent Electrical and Optical Design

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