Abstract
The surface of thin-film solar cells can be tailored with photonic nanostructures to allow light trapping in the absorbing medium. This in turn increases the optical thickness of the film and thus enhances their absorption. Such a coherent light trapping is generally accomplished with deterministic photonic architectures. Here, we experimentally explore the use of a different nanostructure, a disordered one, for this purpose. We show that the disorder-induced modes in the film allow improvements in the absorption over a broad range of frequencies and impinging angles.
© 2013 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Filippo Pratesi, Matteo Burresi, Francesco Riboli, Kevin Vynck, and Diederik S. Wiersma
Opt. Express 21(S3) A460-A468 (2013)
Xiaofeng Li, Cheng Zhang, Zhenhai Yang, and Aixue Shang
Opt. Express 21(S4) A677-A686 (2013)
Michael Smeets, Vladimir Smirnov, Karsten Bittkau, Matthias Meier, Reinhard Carius, Uwe Rau, and Ulrich W. Paetzold
Opt. Express 23(24) A1575-A1588 (2015)