Aimi Abass

Comparing plasmonic and dielectric gratings for absorption enhancement in thin-film organic solar cells

We theoretically investigate and compare the influence of square silver gratings and one-dimensional photonic crystal (1D PC) based nanostructures on the light absorption of organic solar cells with a thin active layer. We show that, by integrating the grating inside the active layer, excited localized surface plasmon modes may cause strong field enhancement at the interface between the grating and the active layer, which results in broadband absorption enhancement of up to 23.4%. Apart from using silver gratings, we show that patterning a 1D PC on top of the device may also result in a comparable broadband absorption enhancement of 18.9%. The enhancement is due to light scattering of the 1D PC, coupling the incoming light into 1D PC Bloch and surface plasmon resonance modes.

Angle insensitive enhancement of organic solar cells using metallic gratings

We explore the optical enhancement of organic photovoltaic cells by incorporating a metallic grating as the back contact. We numerically demonstrate a strongly enhanced light absorption exploiting a complex interplay between multiple electromagnetic wave phenomena, among which surface plasmon polariton (SPP) resonances, waveguide mode resonances, Fabry–Perot modes, and scattering. We focus on a triangular grating structure and describe the particular opportunities to obtain a good angular performance. In addition we introduce a novel multiperiodic geometry that incorporates multiple types of SPP resonances. Our triangular structure shows an increased absorption of 15.6% with the AM1.5G spectrum in the 300–800 nm wavelength range. For the multiperiodic grating case a significant further increase to 20.7% is shown.

Coupling Bright and Dark Plasmonic Lattice Resonances

We demonstrate the coupling of bright and dark surface lattice resonances (SLRs), which are collective Fano resonances in 2D plasmonic crystals. As a result of this coupling, a frequency stop gap in the dispersion relation of SLRs is observed. The different field symmetries of the low- and high-frequency SLR bands lead to pronounced differences in their coupling to free-space radiation. Standing waves of very narrow spectral width compared to localized surface-plasmon resonances are formed at the high-frequency band edge, while subradiant damping onsets at the low-frequency band edge, leading the resonance into darkness. We introduce a coupled-oscillator analog to the plasmonic crystal, which serves to elucidate the physics of the coupled plasmonic resonances and which is used to estimate very high quality factors for SLRs.

Active Liquid Crystal Tuning of Metallic Nanoantenna Enhanced Light Emission from Colloidal Quantum Dots

A system comprising an aluminum nanoantenna array on top of a luminescent colloidal quantum dot waveguide and covered by a thermotropic liquid crystal (LC) is introduced. By heating the LC above its critical temperature, we demonstrate that the concomitant refractive index change modifies the hybrid plasmonic-photonic resonances in the system. This enables active control of the spectrum and directionality of the narrow-band (∼6 nm) enhancement of quantum dot photoluminescence by the metallic nanoantennas.

On the diffusion length and grain size homogeneity requirements for efficient thin-film polycrystalline silicon solar cells

We examine the influence of intragrain defects and grain boundaries on the macroscopic performance of a thin film polycrystalline silicon solar cell. In addition, we evaluate the effect of grain size inhomogeneity on the cell performance via circuit simulations. From an analytical study of charge transport in individual grains and homogeneous grain systems, we obtain the grain size and intragrain diffusion length requirements for a desired efficiency. We identify the conditions under which the grain size and the intragrain diffusion length dominate the cell characteristics. In devices with intragrain effective diffusion length Lmono 100 µm and grain boundary recombination velocity SGB 10 4 cms −1 , achieving a larger grain size beyond several µm is not crucial. The inhomogeneous distribution circuit simulations show that grain size inhomogeneity is not the main limiting factor in polycrystalline silicon solar cells. This is so even in thin polycrystalline silicon films with a broad grain size distribution such as those made with aluminum-induced crystallization at low annealing temperature. The main reason is that the optimum bias point for grains of different sizes only differ by about ∼50mV over a fairly wide grain diameter range 0.5‐50 µm even when Lmono = 100 µm and SGB = 10 5 cms −1 . (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)

The use of the adding-doubling method for the optical optimization of planar luminescent down shifting layers for solar cells

To enhance the efficiency of solar cells, a luminescent down shifting layer can be applied in order to adapt the solar spectrum to the spectral internal quantum efficiency of the semiconductor. Optimization of such luminescent down shifting layers benefits from quick and direct evaluation methods. In this paper, the potential of the adding-doubling method is investigated to simulate the optical behavior of an encapsulated solar cell including a planar luminescent down shifting layer. The results of the adding-doubling method are compared with traditional Monte Carlo ray tracing simulations. The average relative deviation is found to be less than 1.5% for the absorptance in the active layer and the reflectance from the encapsulated cell, while the computation time can be decreased with a factor 52. Furthermore, the adding-doubling method is adopted to investigate the suitability of the SrB4O7:5%Sm2 + ,5%Eu2 + phosphor as a luminescent down shifting material in combination with a Copper Indium Gallium Selenide solar cell. A maximum increase of 9.0% in the short-circuit current can be expected if precautions are taken to reduce the scattering by matching the refractive index of host material to the phosphor particles. To be useful as luminescent down shifting material, the minimal value of the quantum yield of the phosphor is determined to be 0.64.

Enhancement of second-harmonic generation in nonlinear nanolaminate metamaterials by nanophotonic resonances

Nanolaminate metamaterials recently attracted a lot of attention as a novel second-order nonlinear material that can be used in integrated photonic circuits. Here, we explore theoretically and numerically the opportunity to enhance the nonlinear response from such nanolaminates by exploiting Fano resonances supported in grating-coupled waveguides. The enhancement factor of the radiated second harmonic signal compared to a flat nanolaminate can reach values as large as 35 for gold gratings and even 7000 for MgF2 gratings. For the MgF2 grating, extremely high-Q Fano resonances are excited in such all-dielectric system that result in strong local fields in the nonlinear waveguide layer to boost the nonlinear conversion. A significant portion of the nonlinear signal is also strongly coupled to a dark waveguide mode, which remains guided in the nanolaminate. The strong excitation of a dark mode at the second harmonic frequency provides a viable method for utilizing second-order nonlinearities for light generation and manipulation in integrated photonic circuits.

Strategy for tailoring the size distribution of nanospheres to optimize rough backreflectors of solar cells

We study the light-trapping properties of surface textures generated by a bottom-up approach, which utilizes monolayers of densely deposited nanospheres as a template. We demonstrate that just allowing placement disorder in monolayers from identical nanospheres can already lead to a significant boost in light-trapping capabilities. Further absorption enhancement can be obtained by involving an additional nanosphere size species. We show that the Power Spectral Density provides limited correspondence to the diffraction pattern and in turn to the short-circuit current density enhancement for large texture modulations. However, in predicting the optimal nanosphere size distribution, we demonstrate that full-wave simulations of just a c-Si semi-infinite halfspace at a single wavelength in the range where light trapping is of main importance is sufficient to provide an excellent estimate. The envisioned bottom-up approach can thus reliably provide good light-trapping surface textures even with simple nanosphere monolayer templates defined by a limited number of control parameters: two nanosphere radii and their occurrence probability.

Single-pass and omniangle light extraction from light-emitting diodes using transformation optics

We present a light-extraction approach allowing for single-pass and omniangle outcoupling of light from light-emitting diodes (LED). By using transformation optics, we perceive a feasible graded-index structure that is a transition from the LED exit facet to a low refractive index region with expanded space that represents air. Apart from the material dispersion of the constituents, our approach is wavelength independent. The suggested extractor is geometrically compact with size parameters comparable to the width of an LED and therefore well adapted for pixelated LEDs. A beam-expanding functionality is possible while fully preserving the outcoupling efficiency by applying index and geometry truncation.

Second-harmonic generation by 3D ABC-laminate meta-crystals (Conference Presentation)

We recently introduced laminate metamaterials composed of a dielectric ABC layer sequence made by atomic-layer deposition. The ABC sequence breaks inversion symmetry, allowing for second-harmonic generation. Here, we discuss 3D polymeric woodpile photonic crystals conformally coated with such ABC laminate metamaterials (unpublished). In our experiments on such meta-crystals with 24 layers and 600 nm rod spacing at around 800-900 nm fundamental wavelength, we find up to 1000-fold enhancement of the second-harmonic conversion efficiency as compared to the same ABC laminate on a planar glass substrate (for 45 degrees angle of incidence with respect to the substrate and p-polarization). To clarify the underlying mechanism, we have performed extensive numerical calculations based on solving the full-wave problem for the fundamental wave, computing the second-harmonic 3D source-term distribution assuming tensor elements for the ABC laminate as found previously, and numerically computing the resulting emitted second-harmonic wave. This analysis indicates that the enhancement is consistent with guided-mode resonant excitations at the fundamental wavelength inside of the 3D meta-crystal slab, leading to a standing-wave behavior providing beneficial local-field enhancements.