Light-trapping by wave interference in intermediate-thickness silicon solar cells.

The power conversion efficiency of crystalline silicon (c - Si) solar cells have witnessed a 2.1% increase over the last 25 years due to improved carrier transport. Recently, the conversion efficiency of c - Si cell has reached 27.

Fragility of the Schrödinger Cat in thermal environments.

We describe the decoherence instability of Schrödinger Cat states in the two-site Bose-Hubbard model with an attractive on-site interaction between particles. For N particles with onsite attractive energy U and hopping amplitude between sites t, Cat states exist for [Formula: see text] at zero temperature. However, they are increasingly unstable to small thermal fluctuations as the Cat itself is increasingly well-defined and its components become well-separated.

Sound trapping and waveguiding in locally resonant viscoelastic phononic crystals.

We describe the trapping and absorption of audible sound in centimeter-scale claddings of two-dimensional, locally resonant phononic crystals. In a square lattice of local resonators consisting of steel cores and cellulose shells, embedded in a viscous foam, dual acoustic-range band gaps extending from about 200 to [Formula: see text] are achieved. The spectral range consists of a low-frequency, local resonance gap, separated from a higher frequency Bragg resonance gap, by narrow bands of slow-sound modes.

Photonic crystal light trapping for photocatalysis.

The Achilles heel of wide-band photocatalysts such as TiO is the insufficient photogeneration in the visible range under sunlight. This has been a longstanding impediment to large-scale, real-world deployment of titania-based photocatalysis applications. Instead of traditional band engineering through heavy-doping, we suggest enhancing photocatalytic efficiency of lightly-doped TiO using photonic crystal (PC) structures.

Experimental demonstration of broadband solar absorption beyond the lambertian limit in certain thin silicon photonic crystals.

The tantalizing possibility of 31% solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency in thin film crystalline silicon solar cell architectures relies essentially on solar absorption well beyond the Lambertian light trapping limit (Bhattacharya and John in Nat Sci Rep 9:12482, 2019). Up to now, no solar cell architecture has exhibited above-Lambertian solar absorption, integrated over the broad solar spectrum. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate two types of photonic crystal (PhC) solar cells architectures that exceed Lambertian light absorption, integrated over the entire 300-1,200 nm wavelength band.

An In-situ and Direct Confirmation of Super-Planckian Thermal Radiation Emitted From a Metallic Photonic-Crystal at Optical Wavelengths.

Planck's law predicts the distribution of radiation energy, color and intensity, emitted from a hot object at thermal equilibrium. The Law also sets the upper limit of radiation intensity, the blackbody limit. Recent experiments reveal that micro-structured tungsten can exhibit significant deviation from the blackbody spectrum.

Beyond 30% Conversion Efficiency in Silicon Solar Cells: A Numerical Demonstration.

We demonstrate through precise numerical simulations the possibility of flexible, thin-film solar cells, consisting of crystalline silicon, to achieve power conversion efficiency of 31%. Our optimized photonic crystal architecture consists of a 15 μm thick cell patterned with inverted micro-pyramids with lattice spacing comparable to the wavelength of near-infrared light, enabling strong wave-interference based light trapping and absorption. Unlike previous photonic crystal designs, photogenerated charge carrier flow is guided to a grid of interdigitated back contacts with optimized geometry to minimize Auger recombination losses due to lateral current flow.

Topological light-trapping on a dislocation.

Topological insulators have unconventional gapless edge states where disorder-induced back-scattering is suppressed. In photonics, such edge states lead to unidirectional waveguides which are useful for integrated photonic circuitry. Cavity modes, another type of fundamental component in photonic chips, however, are not protected by band topology because of their lower dimensions.

Effectively infinite optical path-length created using a simple cubic photonic crystal for extreme light trapping.

A 900 nm thick TiO simple cubic photonic crystal with lattice constant 450 nm was fabricated and used to experimentally validate a newly-discovered mechanism for extreme light-bending. Absorption enhancement was observed extending 1-2 orders of magnitude over that of a reference TiO film. Several enhancement peaks in the region from 600-950 nm were identified, which far exceed both the ergodic fundamental limit and the limit based on surface-gratings, with some peaks exceeding 100 times enhancement.

Probing the intrinsic optical Bloch-mode emission from a 3D photonic crystal.

We report experimental observation of intrinsic Bloch-mode emission from a 3D tungsten photonic crystal at low thermal excitation. After the successful removal of conventional metallic emission (normal emission), it is possible to make an accurate comparison of the Bloch-mode and the normal emission. For all biases, we found that the emission intensity of the Bloch-mode is higher than that of the normal emission.

Light-trapping for room temperature Bose-Einstein condensation in InGaAs quantum wells.

We demonstrate the possibility of room-temperature, thermal equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of exciton-polaritons in a multiple quantum well (QW) system composed of InGaAs quantum wells surrounded by InP barriers, allowing for the emission of light near telecommunication wavelengths. The QWs are embedded in a cavity consisting of double slanted pore (SP2) photonic crystals composed of InP. We consider exciton-polaritons that result from the strong coupling between the multiple quantum well excitons and photons in the lowest planar guided mode within the photonic band gap (PBG) of the photonic crystal cavity.

Biosensor architecture for enhanced disease diagnostics: lab-in-a-photonic-crystal.

A conceptual lab-in-a-photonic-crystal biosensor is demonstrated that can multiplex four or more distinct disease-markers and distinguish their presence and combinations simultaneously with unique spectral fingerprints. This biosensor consists of a photonic-band-gap, multi-mode waveguide coupled to surface modes on either side, encased in a glass slide with microfluidic channels. The spectral fingerprints consist of multiple peaks in optical transmission vs.

Light-trapping and recycling for extraordinary power conversion in ultra-thin gallium-arsenide solar cells.

We demonstrate nearly 30% power conversion efficiency in ultra-thin (~200 nm) gallium arsenide photonic crystal solar cells by numerical solution of the coupled electromagnetic Maxwell and semiconductor drift-diffusion equations. Our architecture enables wave-interference-induced solar light trapping in the wavelength range from 300-865 nm, leading to absorption of almost 90% of incoming sunlight. Our optimized design for 200 nm equivalent bulk thickness of GaAs, is a square-lattice, slanted conical-pore photonic crystal (lattice constant 550 nm, pore diameter 600 nm, and pore depth 290 nm), passivated with AlGaAs, deposited on a silver back-reflector, with ITO upper contact and encapsulated with SiO2.

Achieving an Accurate Surface Profile of a Photonic Crystal for Near-Unity Solar Absorption in a Super Thin-Film Architecture.

In this work, a teepee-like photonic crystal (PC) structure on crystalline silicon (c-Si) is experimentally demonstrated, which fulfills two critical criteria in solar energy harvesting by (i) its Gaussian-type gradient-index profile for excellent antireflection and (ii) near-orthogonal energy flow and vortex-like field concentration via the parallel-to-interface refraction effect inside the structure for enhanced light trapping. For the PC structure on 500-μm-thick c-Si, the average reflection is only ∼0.7% for λ = 400-1000 nm.

Photonic architectures for equilibrium high-temperature Bose-Einstein condensation in dichalcogenide monolayers.

Semiconductor-microcavity polaritons are composite quasiparticles of excitons and photons, emerging in the strong coupling regime. As quantum superpositions of matter and light, polaritons have much stronger interparticle interactions compared with photons, enabling rapid equilibration and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Current realizations based on 1D photonic structures, such as Fabry-Pérot microcavities, have limited light-trapping ability resulting in picosecond polariton lifetime.

Light trapping design for low band-gap polymer solar cells.

We demonstrate numerically a 2-D nanostructured design for light trapping in a low band-gap polymer solar cell. Finite element method simulations are used to study the effect of varying nanostructure periodicity, height, and shape on active layer absorption. Maintaining a constant active layer thickness of 100 nm we observe an enhancement in solar absorption of almost 40% relative to a planar cell.

Synergistic plasmonic and photonic crystal light-trapping: architectures for optical up-conversion in thin-film solar cells.

We demonstrate, numerically, that with a 60 nanometer layer of optical up-conversion material, embedded with plasmonic core-shell nano-rings and placed below a sub-micron silicon conical-pore photonic crystal it is possible to absorb sunlight well above the Lambertian limit in the 300-1100 nm range. With as little as 500 nm, equivalent bulk thickness of silicon, the maximum achievable photo-current density (MAPD) is about 36 mA/cm2, using above-bandgap sunlight. This MAPD increases to about 38 mA/cm2 for one micron of silicon.

Light trapping and near-unity solar absorption in a three-dimensional photonic-crystal.

We report what is to our knowledge the first observation of the effect of parallel-to-interface-refraction (PIR) in a three-dimensional, simple-cubic photonic-crystal. PIR is an acutely negative refraction of light inside a photonic-crystal, leading to light-bending by nearly 90 deg over broad wavelengths (λ). The consequence is a longer path length of light in the medium and an improved light absorption beyond the Lambertian limit.

Macroscopic response in active nonlinear photonic crystals.

We derive macroscopic equations of motion for the slowly varying electric field amplitude in three-dimensional active nonlinear optical nanostructures. We show that the microscopic Maxwell equations and polarization dynamics can be simplified to a macroscopic one-dimensional problem in the direction of group velocity. For a three-level active material, we derive the steady-state equations for normal mode frequency, threshold pumping, nonlinear Bloch mode amplitude, and lasing in photonic crystals.

Anomalous flow of light near a photonic crystal pseudo-gap.

Two different transport regimes of light are observed in reflection from the same disordered photonic crystal. A model based on the scaling theory of localization explains the behavior of the path length-resolved reflection at two different probing wavelengths. Our results demonstrate the continuous renormalization of the photon diffusion coefficient measured in reflection from random media.

Effective optical response of silicon to sunlight in the finite-difference time-domain method.

The frequency dependent dielectric permittivity of dispersive materials is commonly modeled as a rational polynomial based on multiple Debye, Drude, or Lorentz terms in the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. We identify a simple effective model in which dielectric polarization depends both on the electric field and its first time derivative. This enables nearly exact FDTD simulation of light propagation and absorption in silicon in the spectral range of 300-1000 nm.

Sculpturing of photonic crystals by ion beam lithography: towards complete photonic bandgap at visible wavelengths.

Three dimensional (3D) ion beam lithography (IBL) is used to directly pattern 3D photonic crystal (PhC) structures in crystalline titania. The process is maskless and direct write. The slanted pore 3D structures with pore diameters of 100 nm having aspect ratio of 8 were formed.

Ultrafast population switching of quantum dots in a structured vacuum.

We demonstrate picosecond, high-contrast population flipping of two-level atoms interacting with femtojoule optical pulses in a 3D photonic band gap waveguide. This is the result of giant Mollow splitting caused by strong light localization and a remarkable field-dependent relaxation of the atomic Bloch vector as it evolves near an abrupt jump in the electromagnetic density of states. Unlike steady-state switching, population inversion can remain nearly complete after the pulse subsides.