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Full-Text Articles in Materials Science and Engineering
Increasing Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency In Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Devices With Plasmonic Perfect Meta – Absorbers, Jephias Gwamuri
Increasing Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency In Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Devices With Plasmonic Perfect Meta – Absorbers, Jephias Gwamuri
Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports
Solar photovoltaic (PV) devices are an established, technically-viable and sustainable solution to society’s energy needs, however, in order to reach mass deployment at the terawatt scale, further decreases in the levelized cost of electricity from solar are needed. This can be accomplished with thin-film PV technologies by increasing the conversion efficiency using sophisticated light management methods. This ensures absorption of the entire solar spectrum, while reducing semiconductor absorber layer thicknesses, which reduces deposition time, material use, embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions, and economic costs. Recent advances in optics, particularly in plasmonics and nanophotonics provide new theoretical methods to improve …
Controlling Optical Absorption In Metamaterial Absorbers For Plasmonic Solar Cells, Wyatt Adams, Ankit Vora, Jephias Gwamuri, Joshua M. Pearce, Durdo O. Guney
Controlling Optical Absorption In Metamaterial Absorbers For Plasmonic Solar Cells, Wyatt Adams, Ankit Vora, Jephias Gwamuri, Joshua M. Pearce, Durdo O. Guney
Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications
Metals in the plasmonic metamaterial absorbers for photovoltaics constitute undesired resistive heating. However, tailoring the geometric skin depth of metals can minimize resistive losses while maximizing the optical absorbance in the active semiconductors of the photovoltaic device. Considering experimental permittivity data for InxGa1-xN, absorbance in the semiconductor layers of the photovoltaic device can reach above 90%. The results here also provides guidance to compare the performance of different semiconductor materials. This skin depth engineering approach can also be applied to other optoelectronic devices, where optimizing the device performance demands minimizing resistive losses and power consumption, such as photodetectors, laser diodes, …