Loss mitigation in plasmonic solar cells: aluminium nanoparticles for broadband photocurrent enhancements in GaAs photodiodes

Hylton, Nicholas P.; Li, Xiao Feng; Giannini, Vincenzo; Lee, Kan‐Hua; Ekins-Daukes, N. J.; Loo, Josine; Vercruysse, Dries; Dorpe, Pol Van; Sodabanlu, Hassanet; Sugiyama, Masakazu; Maier, Stefan A.

doi:10.1038/srep02874

Cited by 131 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Constitutive materials such as dielectrics [21], nitrides [22], oxides [23], graphene [24], and superconductors [24-30] have also been explored for possible alternatives to lossy conductors. However, none of these materials have so far shown to outperform the performance of high-conductivity metals at room temperature [31,32]. Active compensation of losses using gain medium has been emerged as the most promising strategy to avoid the deleterious impacts of losses on metamaterial devices.…”

Section: Pacs Numbersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasmon Injection to Compensate and Control Losses in Negative Index Metamaterials

et al. 2015

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Metamaterials have introduced a whole new world of unusual materials with functionalities that cannot be attained in naturally occurring material systems by mimicking and controlling the natural phenomena at subwavelength scales. However, the inherent absorption losses pose fundamental challenge to the most fascinating applications of metamaterials. Based on a novel plasmon injection (PI or )-scheme, we propose a coherent optical amplification technique to compensate losses in metamaterials. Although the proof of concept device here operates under normal incidence only, our proposed scheme can be generalized to arbitrary form of incident waves. The -scheme is fundamentally different than major optical amplification schemes. It does not require gain medium, interaction with phonons, or any nonlinear medium. The -scheme allows for loss-free metamaterials. It is ideally suited for mitigating losses in metamaterials operating in the visible spectrum and is scalable to other optical frequencies. These findings open the possibility of reviving the early dreams of making "magical" metamaterials from scratch. PACS numbers:Metamaterials have led to previously unthought-of applications such as flat lens [1], perfect lens [2], hyperlens [3][4][5], ultimate illusion optics [6][7][8], perfect absorber [9,10], optical analog simulators [11,12], metaspacers [13], and many others. Despite tremendous progress in theory and experimental realizations, the major current challenges seem to further delay the metamaterial era to come. For instance, achieving full isotropy, feasible fabrication methods, broad bandwidth, and compensation of dissipative losses especially at optical frequencies are among the challenges yet to be solved [14,15]. Perhaps, the most critical of all is how to avoid optical losses -especially in large-volume structures. The performance of devices utilizing metamaterials dramatically degrades at optical frequencies due to significant ohmic losses arising from the metallic constituents. The strategies proposed to mitigate the losses include passive reduction and active compensation schemes. Avoiding sharp edges [16], reducing skin depths [16][17][18], and classical analog of electromagnetically induced transparency are proposed as passive loss minimization techniques [19,20]. Constitutive materials such as dielectrics [21], nitrides [22], oxides [23], graphene [24], and superconductors [24-30] have also been explored for possible alternatives to lossy conductors. However, none of these materials have so far shown to outperform the performance of high-conductivity metals at room temperature [31,32]. Active compensation of losses using gain medium has been emerged as the most promising strategy to avoid the deleterious impacts of losses on metamaterial devices. Optically pumped semiconductor quantum dots and quantum wells incorporated in planar metamaterials have been experimentally shown to compensate the losses to some extent [33][34][35][36][37][38]. A remarkable improvement in the figure of merit (FOM) of a ...

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Section: Pacs Numbersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasmon Injection to Compensate and Control Losses in Negative Index Metamaterials

et al. 2015

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“…Previously, light absorption enhancement for CIGSe solar cells was achieved by coating an anti-reflection layer of MgF 2 [4,5] or by improving the internal reflection at the CIGSe/Mo interface via inserting a dielectric layer [6] or via transferring the cells from the typical Mo back contact onto Au which has a better reflectivity [7]. Recently, a number of innovative nanoscale lighttrapping structures have shown the potential to better improve the light absorption including plasmonic structures [8][9][10][11], dielectric diffractive nanostructures [12,13] and photonic crystals [14,15]. However, these innovative structures are mainly for Si-based, GaAs and organic solar cells, a few have been reported for CIGSe solar cells but were limited to theoretical investigations [16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light absorption enhancement for ultra-thin Cu(In1−xGax)Se2 solar cells using closely packed 2-D SiO2 nanosphere arrays

Yin

Manley

Schmid

2016

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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“…Recently, aluminum nanoparticles were investigated in typical plasmonic applications, i.e. efficiency enhancement in solar cells or photodetectors [15][16][17], fluorescence enhancement [18,19] or surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy [20]. Aluminum was also shown to be a promising candidate for a pixelized color representation, which could find its way into display applications by exploiting the fact that aluminum plasmon resonances can cover the entire visible spectrum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxide mediated spectral shifting in aluminum resonant optical antennas

Schwab¹,

Moosmann²,

Dopf³

et al. 2015

Opt. Express

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Abstract:As a key feature among metals showing good plasmonic behavior, aluminum extends the spectrum of achievable plasmon resonances of optical antennas into the deep ultraviolet. Due to degradation, a native oxide layer gives rise to a metal-core/oxide-shell nanoparticle and influences the spectral resonance peak position. In this work, we examine the role of the underlying processes by applying numerical nanoantenna models that are experimentally not feasible. Finite-difference time-domain simulations are carried out for a large variety of elongated single-arm and two-arm gap nanoantennas. In a detailed analysis, which takes into account the varying surface-to-volume ratio, we show that the overall spectral shift toward longer wavelengths is mainly driven by the higher index surrounding material rather than by the decrease of the initial aluminum volume. In addition, we demonstrate experimentally that this shifting can be minimized by an all-inert fabrication and subsequent proof-of-concept encapsulation.

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Loss mitigation in plasmonic solar cells: aluminium nanoparticles for broadband photocurrent enhancements in GaAs photodiodes

Cited by 131 publications

References 33 publications

Plasmon Injection to Compensate and Control Losses in Negative Index Metamaterials

Plasmon Injection to Compensate and Control Losses in Negative Index Metamaterials

Light absorption enhancement for ultra-thin Cu(In1−xGax)Se2 solar cells using closely packed 2-D SiO2 nanosphere arrays

Oxide mediated spectral shifting in aluminum resonant optical antennas

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