TWO APPROACHES FOR INCOHERENT PROPAGATION OF LIGHT IN RIGOROUS NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS

In multidimensional numerical simulations of optoelectronic devices the rigorous Maxwell equations are solved in different ways. However, numerically efficient incoherent propagation of light inside the layers has not been resolved yet. In this paper we present two time- and resource-efficient approaches for optical simulations of incoherent layers embedded in multilayer structures: (a) phase matching and (b) phase elimination approach. The approaches for simulating the incoherent propagation of light in thick layers are derived from Maxwell equations. Both approaches can be applied to any layer in the structure regardless of the position inside the structure and the number of incoherent layers. In rigorous simulations, for low absorbing thick layers scaling down the thickness and increasing extinction coefficient of the layer proportionally is implemented to shorten computational time. The simulation results are verified with the experiment on two types of structures: a bare glass incoherent layer and an amorphous silicon solar cell.