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 show that, given finitely many line-segment mirrors in the plane, that do not touch, and an arbitrary point source of light, if all angles made by lines parallel to mirrors are rational multiples of π, then all but countably many emitted light beams escape. This result is shown to imply that, for a given point source of light, a randomly chosen configuration of finitely many nontouching line...

Silicon light funnels are three-dimensional subwavelength structures in the shape of inverted cones with respect to the incoming illumination. Light funnel (LF) arrays can serve as efficient absorbing layers on account of their light trapping capabilities, which are associated with the presence of high-density complex Mie modes. Specifically, light funnel arrays exhibit broadband absorption enh...

We study metallic nano-particles for light trapping by investigating the optical absorption efficiency of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film with and without metallic nano-particles on its top. The size and shape of these nano-particles are investigated as to their roles of light trapping: scattering light to the absorption medium and converting light to surface plasmons. The optical ...

Understanding the maximal enhancement of solar absorption in semiconductor materials by light trapping promises the development of affordable solar cells. However, the conventional Lambertian limit is only valid for idealized material systems with weak absorption, and cannot hold for the typical semiconductor materials used in solar cells due to the substantial absorption of these materials. He...

In this paper, a thin-film InP-based solar cell designed and simulated. The proposed InP solar cell has a periodic array of plasmonic back-reflector, which consists of a silver layer and two silver nanowires. The indium tin oxide (ITO) layer also utilized as an anti-reflection coating (ARC) layer on top. The design creates a light-trapping structure by using a plasmonic back-reflector and an an...