Related Articles Nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells App. Phys. Rev. 2012, 11 (2012) Minimizing reflection losses from metallic electrodes and enhancing photovoltaic performance using the Simicrograting solar cell with vertical sidewall electrodes Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 103902 (2012) Comparison of periodic light-trapping structures in thin crystalline silicon solar cells J. Appl. Phys. 1...

We demonstrate controlled trapping and manipulation of single silver (Ag) nanowires in two dimensions at a surface using structured light fields generated with a spatial light modulator. The Ag nanowires are attracted toward the regions of maximal optical intensity along the surface when the trapping laser light is linearly polarized and are repelled toward the minima of optical intensity when ...

Based on the super light trapping property of butterfly Trogonoptera brookiana wings, the SiO2 replica of this bionic functional surface was successfully synthesized using a simple and highly effective synthesis method combining a sol-gel process and subsequent selective etching. Firstly, the reflectivity of butterfly wing scales was carefully examined. It was found that the whole reflectance s...

Light trapping is of very high importance for silicon photovoltaics (PV) and especially for thin-film silicon solar cells. In this paper we investigate and compare theoretically the light trapping properties of periodic and stochastic structures having similar geometrical features. The theoretical investigations are based on the actual surface geometry of a scattering structure, characterized b...

Ricky B. Dunbar,1 Holger C. Hesse,1 Dominik S. Lembke,1 and Lukas Schmidt-Mende1,2,* 1Department of Physics and Center for NanoScience (CeNS), Ludwig-Maximilians University, Amalienstrasse 54, 80799 Munich, Germany 2Department of Physics, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, 78457 Constance, Germany (Received 22 June 2011; revised manuscript received 29 November 2011; published 3 Jan...

Recent advances in nanophotonic light trapping open up the new gateway to enhance the absorption of solar energy beyond the so called Yablonovitch Limit. It addresses the urgent needs in developing low cost thin-film solar photovoltaic technologies. However, current design strategy mainly relies on the parametric approach that is subject to the predefined topological design concepts based on ph...

We propose a new figure of merit to assess the performance of light trapping nanostructures for solar cells, which we call the light trapping efficiency (LTE). The LTE has a target value of unity to represent the performance of an ideal Lambertian scatterer, although this is not an absolute limit but rather a benchmark value. Since the LTE aims to assess the nanostructure itself, it is, in prin...