Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 3, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1664
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Funding
- Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC) at Stanford University
- Energy Frontier Research Center
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0001060]
- U.S. Department of Energy [DE-FG36-08GOI8004, DE-FG02-07ER46426]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-FG02-07ER46426] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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Light trapping across a wide band of frequencies is important for applications such as solar cells and photodetectors. Here, we demonstrate a new approach to light management by forming whispering-gallery resonant modes inside a spherical nanoshell structure. The geometry of the structure gives rise to a low quality-factor, facilitating the coupling of light into the resonant modes and substantial enhancement of the light path in the active material, thus dramatically improving absorption. Using nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) as a model system, we observe broadband absorption enhancement across a large range of incident angles. The absorption of a single layer of 50-nm-thick spherical nanoshells is equivalent to a 1-mu m-thick planar nc-Si film. This light-trapping structure could enable the manufacturing of high-throughput ultra-thin film absorbers in a variety of material systems that demand shorter deposition time, less material usage and transferability to flexible substrates.
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