Abstract
Recent advances in nanophotonic light-trapping technologies offer promising solutions in developing high-efficiency thin-film solar cells. However, the cost-effective scalable manufacturing of those rationally designed nanophotonic structures remains a critical challenge. In contrast, diatoms, the most common type of phytoplankton found in nature, may offer a very attractive solution. Diatoms exhibit high solar energy harvesting efficiency due to their frustules (i.e., hard porous cell wall made of silica) possessing remarkable hierarchical micro-/nano-scaled features optimized for the photosynthetic process through millions of years of evolution. Here we report numerical and experimental studies to investigate the light-trapping characteristic of diatom frustule. Rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods are employed to investigate the light-trapping characteristics of the diatom frustules. In simulation, placing the diatom frustules on the surface of the light-absorption materials is found to strongly enhance the optical absorption over the visible spectrum. The absorption spectra are also measured experimentally and the results are in good agreement with numerical simulations.
Highlights
Ranging from 50 nm to more than 1 μ m25–28
We report a theoretical and experimental study on the photonic properties of the diatom frustules and explore the potential application in enhancing the light absorption in PTB7:PC71BM based low-bandgap active materials, which has been widely used in the thin-film solar cells[37,38]
Experimental measurements are in a good agreement with the simulation results. These results reveal the light-trapping effect due to the presence of hierarchical micro-/nano-scaled features in the frustules and the potential to enhance light absorption in the thin film solar cells
Summary
Ranging from 50 nm to more than 1 μ m25–28. The frustule has been optimized for the photosynthetic process through natural evolution[29]. Numerical simulations suggest that the light scattering by the hierarchical frustule structure results in enhanced light absorption in the regions from 380 nm to 500 nm and from 650 nm to 800 nm.
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