Light Absorption Enhancement in Thin-Film Solar Cells Using Whispering Gallery Modes in Dielectric Nanospheres

Freely propagating sunlight can be diffractively coupled and transformed into several guided whispering gallery modes within an array of wavelength scale dielectric spheres. Incident optical power is then transferred to the thin- film cell by leaky mode coupling into a thin solar cell absorber layer and significantly enhances its efficiency by increasing the fraction of incident light absorbed.