Today, due to qualitative growth and scientific advances, energy, especially electricity is increasingly needed by human society. One of the almost endless and pure energy which have been paid attention over the years is the solar energy. Solar cells directly convert solar energy into electrical energy and are one of the main blocks of photovoltaic systems. Significant improvement has been made...

We propose and demonstrate a new optical trapping method for single cells that utilizes modulated light fields to trap a wide array of cell types, including mammalian, yeast, and Escherichia coli cells, on the surface of a two-dimensional photonic crystal. This method is capable of reducing the required light intensity, and thus minimizing the photothermal damage to living cells, thereby extend...

We analyze doubly magic trapping of Cs hyperfine transitions including previously neglected contributions from the ground state hyperpolarizability and the interaction of the laser light and a static magnetic field. Extensive numerical searches do not reveal any doubly magic trapping conditions for any pair of hyperfine states. However, including the hyperpolarizability reveals light intensity ...

Nanostructures of noble metal materials have been used in organic solar cells for enhancement of performance and light trapping. In this study, we have introduced branched silver cauliflower-like nanopatterns as sub-wavelength structured metal grating in organic solar cells. Self-assembled fabrication process of branched nanopatterns was carried out on a bio-template of cicada wing nanonipple a...

Dielectric gratings are a promising method of achieving light trapping for thin crystalline silicon solar cells. In this paper, we systematically examine the potential performance of thin silicon solar cells with either silicon (Si) or titanium dioxide (TiO2) gratings using numerical simulations. The square pyramid structure with silicon nitride coating provides the best light trapping among al...

The review considers the influence of Bloch surface waves on the optical and magneto-optical effects observed in photonic crystals; for example, the Goos–Hänchen effect, the Faraday effect, optical trapping and so on. Prospects for using Bloch surface waves for spatial light modulation, for controlling the polarization of light, for optical trapping and control of micro-objects are discussed.

We have investigated two complementary nanostructures, nanocavity and nanopillar arrays, for light absorption enhancement in depleted heterojunction colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cells. A facile complementary fabrication process is demonstrated for patterning these nanostructures over the large area required for light trapping in photovoltaic devices. The simulation results show that both p...

Light-trapping enhancement in newly discovered graded photonic super-crystals (GPSCs) with dual periodicity and dual basis is herein explored for the first time. Broadband, wide-incident-angle, and polarization-independent light-trapping enhancement was achieved in silicon solar cells patterned with these GPSCs. These super-crystals were designed by multi-beam interference, rendering them flexi...

An efficient light trapping scheme is a key to enhancing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) cells by compensating for the insufficient light absorption. To handle optical components from nano-scale to micro-scale seamlessly, a multi-scale optical simulation is carefully designed in this study and is used to qualitatively analyze the light trapping performances ...