Abstract
Solar cells are important in the area of renewable energies. Since it is expensive to produce solar-grade silicon [Electrochem. Soc. Interface 17, 30 (2008)], especially thin-film solar cells are interesting. However, the efficiency of such solar cells is low. Therefore, it is important to increase the efficiency. The group of Polman has shown that a periodic arrangement of metal particles is able to enhance the absorbance of light [Nano Lett. 11, 1760 (2011)]. However, a quasicrystalline arrangement of the metal particles is expected to enhance the light absorbance independent of the incident polar and azimuthal angles due to the more isotropic photonic bandstructure. In this paper, we compare the absorption enhancement of a quasiperiodic photonic crystal to that of a periodic photonic crystal. We indeed find that the absorption enhancement for the quasicrystalline arrangement shows such an isotropic behavior. This implies that the absorption efficiency of the solar cell is relatively constant during the course of the day as well as the year. This is particularly important with respect to power distribution, power storage requirements, and the stability of the electric grid upon massive use of renewable energy.
Highlights
Nowadays, renewable energies become more important due to the fact that several countries decided to phase out nuclear power and fossil fuels for security as well as for climate change reasons [1, 2]
We find that the enhancement factor for absorbed light in the quasicrystalline case is much less dependent on the azimuthal as well as the polar angle and is more constant during the day as well as over the year when compared to periodic structures
Absorption enhancement compared to the bare silicon-on-insulator substrate was reached by introducing a layer of gold disks placed on top of the Si layer in a 2D quasiperiodic as well as a 2D periodic fashion
Summary
Renewable energies become more important due to the fact that several countries decided to phase out nuclear power and fossil fuels for security as well as for climate change reasons [1, 2]. The efficiency of LEDs, which work in the opposite direction than solar cells, was enhanced by using less ordered or quasicrystalline 2D grating structures [16,17,18,19]. Another approach is the use of a randomly textured Zinc oxide layer on top of the Si layer [20]. We present predictions based on a Fano model for quasiperiodic plasmonic structures compared to periodic structures on top of a silicon-on-insulator solar cell design. We find that the enhancement factor for absorbed light in the quasicrystalline case is much less dependent on the azimuthal as well as the polar angle and is more constant during the day as well as over the year when compared to periodic structures
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