Efficient wave optics modeling of nanowire solar cells using rigorous coupled-wave analysis

Abstract

We investigate the accuracy of rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) for near-field computations within cylindrical GaAs nanowire solar cells and discover excellent accuracy with low computational cost at long incident wavelengths but poor accuracy at short incident wavelengths. These near fields give the carrier generation rate, and their accurate determination is essential for device modeling. We implement two techniques for increasing the accuracy of the near fields generated by RCWA and give some guidance on parameters required for convergence along with an estimate of their associated computation times. The first improvement removes Gibbs phenomenon artifacts from the RCWA fields, and the second uses the extremely well-converged far-field absorption to rescale the local fields. These improvements allow a computational speedup between 30 and 1000 times for spectrally integrated calculations, depending on the density of the near fields desired. Some spectrally resolved quantities, especially at short wavelengths, remain expensive, but RCWA is still an excellent method for performing those calculations. These improvements open up the possibility of using RCWA for low-cost optical modeling in a full optoelectronic device model of nanowire solar cells.

Recent Advances in Vertically Aligned Nanowires for Photonics Applications

“…In recent years, nanowires originated from a wide variety of materials have arisen as a centerpiece for optoelectronic applications such as sensors, solar cells, optical filters, displays, light-emitting diodes and photodetectors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Tractable but outstanding, optical features of nanowire arrays achieved by modulating its physical properties (e.g., diameter, height and pitch) allow to confine and absorb the incident light considerably, albeit its compact configuration.…”

Resonant perfect absorption of molybdenum disulfide beyond the bandgap

“…[21][22][23][24] Many studies that have achieved visible perfect absorption of MoS 2 utilized metasurface-induced effects. [25][26][27] Utilizing plasmonic nanoantennas, the light absorption of MoS 2 was greatly enhanced and the photocurrent at 633 nm increased 10-fold. [28] An average absorption of 64.5% for monolayer MoS 2 was obtained in the visible range of 400 nm-750 nm using a tetramerized nanorod metasurface.…”

Efficient Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis Simulation of Mueller Matrix Ellipsometry of Three-Dimensional Multilayer Nanostructures

“…Among the numerical methods for periodic nanostructures, RCWA has been widely applied because of its simplicity and accuracy [12][13][14][15]. Since it is well-formulated, RCWA method has been extensively studied for speeding up the modeling of the optical properties of subwavelength-grating structures and improving the efficiency of inverse problemsolving for accurate dimensional determination.…”