Light Absorption Enhancement in Thin-Film Solar Cells Using Whispering Gallery Modes in Dielectric Nanospheres

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 1272-1276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Grandidier ◽  
Dennis M. Callahan ◽  
Jeremy N. Munday ◽  
Harry A. Atwater
2011 ◽  
Vol 1322 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Wang ◽  
S. Wu ◽  
Y.L. Lu ◽  
Kitt Reinhardt ◽  
S.C. Chen

ABSTRACTCurrently, the performances of thin film solar cells are limited by poor light absorption and carrier collection. In this research, large, broadband, and polarization-insensitive light absorption enhancement was realized via incorporation of different periodic nanopetterns. By studying the enhancement effect brought by different materials, dimensions, coverage, and dielectric environments of the metal nanopatterns, we analyzed the absorption enhancement mechanisms as well as optimization criteria for our designs. A test for totaling the absorption over the solar spectrum shows an up to ∼30% broadband absorption enhancement when comparing to conventional thin film cells.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinna He ◽  
Chunzhen Fan ◽  
Junqiao Wang ◽  
Yongguang Cheng ◽  
Pei Ding ◽  
...  

The performances of thin film solar cells are considerably limited by the low light absorption. Plasmonic nanostructures have been introduced in the thin film solar cells as a possible solution around this issue in recent years. Here, we propose a solar cell design, in which an ultrathin Si film covered by a periodic array of Ag strips is placed on a metallic nanograting substrate. The simulation results demonstrate that the designed structure gives rise to 170% light absorption enhancement over the full solar spectrum with respect to the bared Si thin film. The excited multiple resonant modes, including optical waveguide modes within the Si layer, localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of Ag stripes, and surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) arising from the bottom grating, and the coupling effect between LSPR and SPP modes through an optimization of the array periods are considered to contribute to the significant absorption enhancement. This plasmonic solar cell design paves a promising way to increase light absorption for thin film solar cell applications.


2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 055005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baozeng Li ◽  
Jingquan Lin ◽  
Ji Lu ◽  
Xiaoxiao Su ◽  
Jie Li

2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shima Hajimirza ◽  
John R. Howell

This work is a statistical study of the broadband light absorption in thin film solar cells, enhanced by metallic surface nanotexturing. We consider optimum grating structures on the surface of amorphous silicon solar cells obtained by inverse optimization, and study the joint statistics of the resulting absorption enhancement/spectra in the presence of time and structural variants, such as fabrication error and year around changes in the solar irradiance, as well as the angle of incident. We adopt yearly data for solar irradiation at individual hours. In conjunction with the data for light absorption spectra at various incident angles and random samples of the fabrication error vector, we evaluate the real world performance of optimized solar cells. The resulting conclusions serve as a sensitivity/time analysis for better understanding the limits of performance and robustness of thin film cells and optimal light trapping mechanisms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 055032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuyuan Zhang ◽  
Min Liu ◽  
Wen Liu ◽  
Yusheng Liu ◽  
Zhaofeng Li ◽  
...  

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