Investigation of Photon Redistribution in High Temperature Photonic Crystal Structures

Abstract

We have simulated the angle-dependent absorption and thermal emittance of two dimensional metallic and metallodielectric photonic crystals (PCs) with rigorous scattering matrix methodswhere Maxwell's equations are solved in Fourier space. These metallic photonic crystals exhibit strong thermal emittance and absorption peaks in the normal direction. This peak splits into multiple peaks at larger and shorter wavelengths away from the normal direction. The thermal emission at different wavelengths is redistributed into different emission angles. There is partial suppression of photon emission at long wavelengths and enhancement at the shorter wavelength spectral range where the thermal emittance has a maximum. Angle-dependent measurements of the emission in metallo-dielectric photonic crystals are performed. Simulations compare well with these measurements and are consistent with the surface plasmon model. The strong dependence of the absorption with angle is very important for thermo-photovoltaic devices.