Broadband solar absorption with silicon metamaterials driven by strong proximity effects.

ABSTRACT: Absorption of the solar radiation over a wide spectral range is of utmost importance to applications related to the harvesting of solar energy. We numerically demonstrate broadband solar absorption enhancement employing a metamaterial in the form of arrays composed of subwavelength silicon truncated inverted cones, henceforth referred to as light funnel (LF) arrays. We show that the broadband absorption efficiency of an unoptimized LF array is 36% greater compared with an optically-maximized NP array. We show that photon trapping in LF arrays is motivated by proximity effects related to the optical overlap between LFs. We make the distinction between two types of optical overlap: weak overlap in which the coupling between the sparse array modes and the impinging illumination increases with

SUBMITTER: Chauhan A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9419790 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature