We report on the fabrication, the characterization, and the optical simulation of a gold-silica nanocomposite and present its integration into a broadband anti-reflective coating (ARC) for a silicon substrate. The two-layer ARC consists of a nanocomposite (randomly distributed gold cluster in a silica matrix) and a pure silica film. We capitalize on the large refractive index of the composite t...

We report the first results of self-assembled nanostructures using colloids for antireflection optical coatings. Two-dimensional (2D) periodic nano-structures were made by using self-assembled 2D colloidal crystals on top of a transparent substrate. An atomic force microscope was used to evaluate the quality of the nanostructure. The feature size of the structures was around 105 nm. This sub-wa...

The reflection of light at interfaces limits the performance of optical components. An anti-reflection (AR) coating layer is often applied to improve the optical transmittance. Besides the commonly used singleor multi-layer coatings reducing the reflection, subwavelength nanostructures have gained more attention as an effective AR feature. A wide choice of materials can be nanostructured withou...

This paper presents the design and analysis of nano-structured gratings to improve the conversion efficiency in GaAs solar cells by reducing the light reflection losses. A finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulation tool is used to design and simulate the light reflection losses of the subwavelength grating (SWG) structure in GaAs solar cells. The SWG structures perform as an excellent alte...

Standing wave field distributions in three classic types of graded-index antireflection coatings are studied. These graded-index antireflection coatings are designed at wavelengths from 200 nm to 1200 nm, which is the working wavelength range of high energy laser system for inertial-fusion research. The standing wave field distributions in these coatings are obtained by the numerical calculatio...