2019/11/20 by Massimo L. Villinger, Villinger, Massimo L., Abbas Shiri +11 · 3 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #FOS: Electrical engineering #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic and Optical Devices #Silicon Nanostructures and Photoluminescence #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #Thin-Film Transistor Technologies #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1911.09276
openalex publication_date 2019/11/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Minimizing the material usage in thin-film solar cells can reduce\nmanufacturing costs and enable mechanically flexible implementations, but\nconcomitantly diminishes optical absorption. Coherent optical effects can help\nalleviate this inevitable drawback at discrete frequencies. For example,\ncoherent perfect absorption guarantees that light is fully absorbed in a thin\nlayer regardless of material or thickness but only on resonance. Here we show\nthat omni resonance delivers such coherent enhancement over a broad bandwidth\nby structuring the optical field to nullify the angular dispersion intrinsic to\nresonant structures. After embedding an amorphous-silicon thin film\nphotovoltaic cell in a planar cavity, pre conditioning the incident light using\nan alignment free optical arrangement severs the link between the resonant\nbandwidth and the cavity photon lifetime, thereby rendering the cavity omni\nresonant. Coherently enhanced near infrared absorption doubles the photocurrent\nover the targeted spectral range 660 to 740 nm where every wavelength\nresonates. These results may pave the way to transparent solar cells that\noptimally harvest near infrared light.\n