Chaos: a new mechanism for enhancing the optical generation rate in optically thin solar cells

Eivind Seim; Achim Kohler; Rozalia Lukacs; Maren Anna Brandsrud; Erik Stensrud Marstein; Espen Olsen; Reinhold Blümel

doi:10.1117/12.2514959

27 February 2019 Chaos: a new mechanism for enhancing the optical generation rate in optically thin solar cells

Eivind Seim, Achim Kohler, Rozalia Lukacs, Maren Anna Brandsrud, Erik Stensrud Marstein, Espen Olsen, Reinhold Blümel

Proceedings Volume 10913, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices VIII; 109131O (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2514959
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The photogeneration current of solar cells can be enhanced by light management with surface structures. For solar cells with thin absorbing layers, such as optically thin solar cells, it is especially crucial to take advantage of this fact. The general idea is to maximize the path length of light rays in the absorber. For instance, assuming normal incidence, before entering the energy-converting material, the light rays need to be directed away from the incident direction in order to maximize their path length, and therefore the absorption, in the energy-converting material of a optically thin solar cell. In the field of chaotic scattering it is well known that trajectories that approach the invariant set of a chaotic scatterer may spend a very long time inside of the scatterer before they leave. The invariant set, also called the chaotic repeller in this case, contains all rays of infinite length that never enter or leave the region of the scatterer. If chaotic repellers exist in a system, a chaotic dynamics is present in the scatterer. Chaotic scattering dynamics is interesting in the context of surface-structured solar cells, since the topology of the shape can imply the existence of the invariant set of infinitely long-lived trajectories. On this basis, we investigate an elliptical dome structure placed on top of an optically thin absorbing film, a system inspired by the chaotic Bunimovich stadium. A classical ray-tracing program has been developed to classify the scattering dynamics and to evaluate the absorption efficiency, modeled with Beer-Lambert’s law.

Citation Download Citation

Eivind Seim, Achim Kohler, Rozalia Lukacs, Maren Anna Brandsrud, Erik Stensrud Marstein, Espen Olsen, and Reinhold Blümel "Chaos: a new mechanism for enhancing the optical generation rate in optically thin solar cells", Proc. SPIE 10913, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices VIII, 109131O (27 February 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2514959

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