Abstract
We study the optical properties of a 2D Photonic Crystal (PC) inserted in the upper ITO electrode of a classical P3HT:PCBM solar architecture with an ultra-thin active layer. First, we analyze the optical response of the system when only the active layer is supposed to absorb light. This allows us to observe clear photonic crystal resonances in the absorption spectrum, which increase the cell efficiency even if the period of the PC is higher than the wavelength. This is in apparent contradiction with the common belief that PC should work in subwavelength regime. Then, by turning to a real system (with optical losses in all the layers), an optimized PC design is proposed, where the maximum of efficiency is obtained for a PC period of 1200 nm, much larger than visible wavelength.
© 2014 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Rana Biswas and Erik Timmons
Opt. Express 21(S5) A841-A846 (2013)
L. Song and A. Uddin
Opt. Express 20(S5) A606-A621 (2012)
Aaswath Raman, Zongfu Yu, and Shanhui Fan
Opt. Express 19(20) 19015-19026 (2011)