To reduce costs, the solar cell industry aims at producing thinner solar cells. Structuring the surfaces of optically thin devices is important for avoiding transmission-related losses and, hence, increasing their efficiency. Light trapping leads to longer optical pathlengths and increased absorption of energy. In addition, resonances in the nanostructures enhance the absorption in the energy-converting material. Further, resonances in periodic structures may couple with each other and thereby increase the absorption. Here, we establish a model system consisting of a multilayered solar cell to study resonances and coupling of resonances in a one-dimensional system. We show that resonances in energy-converting and nonenergy converting layers exist, evaluate the resonances and the coupling of resonances in different thin-film systems, and show how they affect the total absorption of energy in the energy-converting layer. We optimize the parameters of the multilayered thin-film systems to achieve an increase in the amount of the absorbed energy. We find that resonances in nonabsorbing material at the top may lead to absorption enhancement, while we cannot find any enhancement effect due to the coupling of resonances.
Infrared spectra of cells and tissues exhibit a variety of scattering phenomena that have been studied in the literature during recent years. The most intriguing scattering phenomena that have been observed are so-called Mie-type scattering phenomena. Mie-type scattering occurs in nearly spherical-shaped scatterers, when the size of the scatterer is of the same order as the wavelength employed. Mie scattering is the scattering of electromagnetic radiation at a spherical scatterer and was solved analytically by Gustav Mie already in 1908. The analytical Mie solutions have been used in model-based pre-processing approaches for retrieving pure absorbance spectra from highly distorted, measured infrared spectra of cells and tissues. While existing iterative algorithms have been shown to be able to retrieve pure absorbance spectra efficiently in many practical situations, the question remains to what extent the analytical Mie solutions describe the extinction efficiency in practical situations, where the shape of cells deviate considerably from perfect spheres. From other fields it is well known that deviations of shapes can change the absorption properties of a scatterer considerably. In the context of chaos in wave systems, it was shown that chaotic scattering may enhance absorption properties of a scatterer considerably. Small deviations from perfect spherical scatterers that involve changes in the size of the refractive index, may easily lead to a transition between regular and chaotic scattering. The aim of the current study is to investigate how deviations from a spherical scatterer leading to chaotic scattering can change the extinction properties of the scatterer. For this purpose, we investigate a scatterer that is shaped like a Bunimovich billiard. A Bunimovich-billiard shaped scatterer has been shown to be chaotic, and it allows to study the gradual transition between a chaotic scatterer (billiard) and a regular scatterer (sphere).
The photogeneration current of solar cells can be enhanced by light management with surface structures. For solar cells with thin absorbing layers, such as optically thin solar cells, it is especially crucial to take advantage of this fact. The general idea is to maximize the path length of light rays in the absorber. For instance, assuming normal incidence, before entering the energy-converting material, the light rays need to be directed away from the incident direction in order to maximize their path length, and therefore the absorption, in the energy-converting material of a optically thin solar cell. In the field of chaotic scattering it is well known that trajectories that approach the invariant set of a chaotic scatterer may spend a very long time inside of the scatterer before they leave. The invariant set, also called the chaotic repeller in this case, contains all rays of infinite length that never enter or leave the region of the scatterer. If chaotic repellers exist in a system, a chaotic dynamics is present in the scatterer. Chaotic scattering dynamics is interesting in the context of surface-structured solar cells, since the topology of the shape can imply the existence of the invariant set of infinitely long-lived trajectories. On this basis, we investigate an elliptical dome structure placed on top of an optically thin absorbing film, a system inspired by the chaotic Bunimovich stadium. A classical ray-tracing program has been developed to classify the scattering dynamics and to evaluate the absorption efficiency, modeled with Beer-Lambert’s law.
In order to reduce costs, the solar cell industry is aiming at producing ever thinner solar cells. Structuring the surfaces of optically thin solar cells is important for avoiding excessive transmission-related losses and, hence, to maintain or increase their efficiency. Light trapping leading to longer optical path lengths within the solar cells is a well established field of research. In addition to this, other possible benefits of structured surfaces have been proposed. It has been suggested that nanostructures on the surface of thin solar cells function as resonators, inducing electric-field resonances that enhance absorption in the the energy-converting material. Further, coupling of electric field resonances in periodically structured solar cells may couple with each other thereby increasing the absorption of energy. A deeper understanding of the nature of the energy-conversion enhancement in surface-structured and thin solar cells would allow to design more targeted structures. Generally, efficiency enhancement may be evaluated by investigating the electric field and optimizing the optical generation rate. Here, we establish a model system consisting of multilayered solar cells in order to study resonances and coupling of resonances in a one-dimensional system. We show that resonances in energyconverting and non-energy converting layers exist. The coupling of resonances in the non-energy converting material and the energy-converting material is only possible for certain parameter ranges of thickness of the energy converting material and the imaginary part of the refractive index. We evaluate the resonances and the coupling of resonances in different thin-film systems and show how they affect the total absorption of energy in the energy converting layer. We show how resonances in non-absorbing layers can contribute to increasing the resonances in the absorbing layers. We optimize the parameters of the multilayered thin-film systems to achieve an increase in the amount of the absorbed energy. The optimization is also evaluated for an experimentally realizable thin-film solar cell.
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