Absorption enhancement in amorphous silicon photonic crystals for thin film photovoltaic solar cells

2009/05/13 by Daif, Ounsi El, Drouard, Emmanuel, Park, Yeonsang +8
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0905.2204

Abstract

We report on very high enhancement of thin layer's absorption through band-engineering of a photonic crystal structure. We realized amorphous silicon (aSi) photonic crystals, where slow light modes improve absorption efficiency. We show through simulation that an increase of the absorption by a factor of 1.5 is expected for a film of aSi. The proposal is then validated by an experimental demonstration, showing an important increase of the absorption of a layer of aSi over a spectral range of 0.32-0.76 microns.

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