Enhanced evanescent mode light trapping in organic solar cells and other low index optoelectronic devices

Green, Martin A.

doi:10.1002/pip.1038

Cited by 54 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Here the evanescent fi eld becomes highly concentrated in the small gap due to its low refractive index, [ 56 ] at the cost of the mode in the fi lm, and the simulations show that for any corner rounding at all, the strongest fi eld concentration is in this gap. In Figure 7 d-g, as the RoC is increased a clear reduction of the electric fi eld strength in the spacer can be observed, meaning that the resonance conditions of this system will become less sensitive to what is happening in the fi lm as RoC is increased, which is highly undesirable for a sensor, which depends on the fi lm response.…”

Section: Full Paper Full Paper Full Papermentioning

confidence: 96%

Plasmonic Gas Sensing Using Nanocube Patch Antennas

Powell

Coles

Taylor

et al. 2016

Advanced Optical Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

of interest and be as sensitive as possible to small changes in the local environment. While individual particle resonances can be effectively tuned through size, shape and material choice, [ 2,12 ] coupled modes between two or more nanoparticles have been shown to exhibit far greater electric fi eld enhancements and produce more sensitive detectors. [13][14][15][16][17][18] However, these are extremely diffi cult to fabricate, with many top-down lithographic and FIBbased examples being unrealistic for scaling up, and bottom-up techniques that generally produce randomly oriented particle pairs with no control over the alignment, which is key as the resonances of such dimers are highly sensitive to the polarization of incident illumination. Henzie et al. made some important progress in this fi eld by using a gravity-driven technique to assemble nanoparticles in shallow pits in a substrate, which allows excellent control over orientation and positioning of any number of particle sets. [ 19 ] Another elegant solution to the fabrication problem is the placement of a metallic particle above a metal sheet separated by a thin spacer. A "mirror particle" is excited in the metal plane, which produces a strong coupling effect without having to align two separate particles, drastically simplifying the production process. [ 22 ] There is a growing body of work investigating the properties of silver nanocubes (NCs) above metal fi lms, to tune their scattering properties, [ 21 ] produce controlled-refl ectance surfaces, [ 22 ] and to control and enhance the radiative processes of fl uorophores within the spacer material, [ 23,24 ] as well as theoretical studies looking to build a complete description of the structure. [ 25,26 ] This system can be considered an optical patch antenna, where gap plasmon modes are supported between the metal sheet and the NC. [ 21 ] The resonant modes of these antennae are extremely sensitive to the properties of the spacer layer separating the NC and the silver sheet, and any environmental changes that infl uence the refractive index (RI), or more importantly the thickness of the chosen material will produce signifi cant changes in the plasmon resonance. As long as spacer materials which expand in response to a given analyte are available, this design can be utilized to detect any number of chemicals. This forms the basis for a new type of sensor, which can operate equally well in a gaseous or liquid setting (depending on spacer choice) and that is scalable from the sub-wavelength scale (the footprint of one nanocube) up to a large-surface area metamaterial.In this paper, we demonstrate the operation of the nanocube patch antenna system as a gas sensor for the fi rst time, usingThe ability of individual nanocube patch antennas, consisting of a silver nanocube separated from an Ag sheet by a thin fl uoropolymer spacer, to act as subwavelength sensing elements is demonstrated. An increase in relative humidity (RH) causes the spacer to expand, which alters the resonance of the plasmon cavity mode fo...

show abstract

Section: Full Paper Full Paper Full Papermentioning

confidence: 96%

Plasmonic Gas Sensing Using Nanocube Patch Antennas

Powell

Coles

Taylor

et al. 2016

Advanced Optical Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite the early work suggesting that the absorption enhancement in thin slabs is less than 4n 2 , recent work has shown that the enhancement may in fact exceed this limit through the use of photonic crystals, 5 plasmonic waveguides, 6 and high index claddings, 7,8 which all elevate the local density of optical states to achieve enhancment. 9 Here we revisit the case of a thin waveguide and determine that the 4n 2 limit can be exceeded for a number of structures that support large propagation constants and/or slow modal group velocities.…”

Section: Limit In Thin Waveguidesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light trapping beyond the 4n2 limit in thin waveguides

Munday

Callahan

Atwater

2012

Applied Physics Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nonreciprocal optical Bloch-Zener oscillations in ternary parity-time-symmetric waveguide lattices Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 151913 (2012) Analysis of dielectric loaded surface plasmon waveguide structures: Transfer matrix method for plasmonic devices J. Appl. Phys. 111, 073108 (2012) Coupling of energy from quantum emitters to the plasmonic mode of V groove waveguides: A numerical study J. Appl. Phys. 111, 064323 (2012) Temporal dynamics of all-optical switching in quadratic nonlinear directional couplers

show abstract

“…It requires the electromagnetic local density of optical states (LDOS) over the active layer is higher than the LDOS of the bulk material [8] . If the evanescent mode at the interface can be effectively trapped for electron-hole pair generation, the enhancement margin could be even greater [29] .…”

Section: Guidance Direction Of Lightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanoplasmonics: a frontier of photovoltaic solar cells

Ouyang

Jia

et al. 2012

Nanophotonics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nanoplasmonics recently has emerged as a new frontier of photovoltaic research. Noble metal nanostructures that can concentrate and guide light have demonstrated great capability for dramatically improving the energy conversion efficiency of both laboratory and industrial solar cells, providing an innovative pathway potentially transforming the solar industry. However, to make the nanoplasmonic technology fully appreciated by the solar industry, key challenges need to be addressed; including the detrimental absorption of metals, broadband light trapping mechanisms, cost of plasmonic nanomaterials, simple and inexpensive fabrication and integration methods of the plasmonic nanostructures, which are scalable for full size manufacture. This article reviews 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.

show abstract

Enhanced evanescent mode light trapping in organic solar cells and other low index optoelectronic devices

Cited by 54 publications

References 21 publications

Plasmonic Gas Sensing Using Nanocube Patch Antennas

Plasmonic Gas Sensing Using Nanocube Patch Antennas

Light trapping beyond the 4n2 limit in thin waveguides

Nanoplasmonics: a frontier of photovoltaic solar cells

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About