TY - JOUR
T1 - Enhancement of light absorption efficiency of amorphous-silicon thin-film tandem solar cell due to multiple surface-plasmon-polariton waves in the near-infrared spectral regime ∗
AU - Faryad, Muhammad
AU - Lakhtakia, Akhlesh
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by US National Science Foundation grant DMR-1125591. The authors thank Liu Liu, A. Shoji Hall, Greg D. Barber, Theresa S. Mayer, and Thomas E. Mallouk of the Pennsylvania State University for helpful discussions during the course of this work. A. L. thanks the Charles G. Binder Endowment at Penn State for ongoing support of his research.
Publisher Copyright:
©2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
PY - 2013/8/1
Y1 - 2013/8/1
N2 - The reflectances of a thin-film solar cell were computed, using the rigorous coupled-wave approach, as functions of the angle of incidence and the free-space wavelength for illumination by linearly polarized plane waves. A tandem solar cell made of amorphous-silicon alloys was considered. The metallic back-reflector was taken to be periodically corrugated. Both the simple and the compound periodic corrugations of the metallic back-reflector (surface-relief gratings) were investigated. Lowreflectance bands in the reflectance spectrums were correlated with the solutions of the underlying canonical boundary-value problem to delineate the excitation of multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves. For the standard AM1.5 solar irradiance spectrum, we found that the light absorption efficiency in the near-infrared spectral regime can be increased up to 100% when multiple SPP waves of both linear polarization states are excited.
AB - The reflectances of a thin-film solar cell were computed, using the rigorous coupled-wave approach, as functions of the angle of incidence and the free-space wavelength for illumination by linearly polarized plane waves. A tandem solar cell made of amorphous-silicon alloys was considered. The metallic back-reflector was taken to be periodically corrugated. Both the simple and the compound periodic corrugations of the metallic back-reflector (surface-relief gratings) were investigated. Lowreflectance bands in the reflectance spectrums were correlated with the solutions of the underlying canonical boundary-value problem to delineate the excitation of multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves. For the standard AM1.5 solar irradiance spectrum, we found that the light absorption efficiency in the near-infrared spectral regime can be increased up to 100% when multiple SPP waves of both linear polarization states are excited.
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U2 - 10.1117/1.OE.52.8.087106
DO - 10.1117/1.OE.52.8.087106
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84887475990
VL - 52
JO - SPIE J
JF - SPIE J
SN - 0091-3286
IS - 8
M1 - 087106
ER -