Ultrathin mono-resonant nano photovoltaic device for broadband solar conversion

Florian Proise (1) , Anne-Laure Joudrier (2) , Fabrice Pardo (3) , Jean-Luc Pelouard (3) , Jean-Francois Guillemoles (1)

1 IRDEP - Institut de Recherche et Développement sur l'Energie Photovoltaïque
2 ENSCP - Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris - Chimie ParisTech-PSL
3 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures

Nano-resonators can be used in photovoltaics to drastically improve the ability of the device to absorb light and generate photo-carriers, therefore enabling a reduction of the absorber volume. Conventionally, the harvest of the spectrally broad solar spectrum is achieved via the tedious engineering of multiple optical resonances. In this paper, we propose a breakthrough approach, which consists in reducing the solar spectral range with a spectral conversion layer to match only one resonance that can then be easily designed. We use a Maxwell solver and a ray-tracing code to optimize the nano-resonator and its spectral converter. We show that 66.2% optical efficiency can be theoretically achieved in less than 40 nm mean thick absorber while leading to device design enabling collection of photo-generated carriers.

Domaines: Physique [physics]; Matière Condensée [cond-mat]

Florian Proise, Anne-Laure Joudrier, Fabrice Pardo, Jean-Luc Pelouard, Jean-Francois Guillemoles. Ultrathin mono-resonant nano photovoltaic device for broadband solar conversion. Optics Express, 2018. ⟨hal-02344161⟩