Abstract

There is growing interest in how nano- and microstructured materials can be used to achieve high absorption within small material volumes. This area of structural absorption engineering has the ultimate goal of making cheaper, more efficient solar cells. In our work [1-7], we have carried out large-scale electromagnetic simulations to systematically study the structural dependence of optical absorption in periodic nanostructure arrays, such as nanowire [1,2,3,5] and nanohole arrays [2]. We have also investigated the effect of positional randomness and optimal design in aperiodic photovoltaic absorbers [4] and anti-reflecting surface textures [6].

© 2012 Optical Society of America