Photocurrent enhancement in ultrathin silicon by the photonic band-edge effect

Author

Fujita, Masayuki ; Shigeta, Hiroaki ; Tanaka, Yoshinori ; Oskooi, Ardavan ; Ogawa, Hiroyuki ; Tsuda, Yusuke ; Noda, Susumu

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Sci. & Eng., Kyoto Univ., Kyoto, Japan

fYear

2012

fDate

23-27 Sept. 2012

Firstpage

124

Lastpage

125

Abstract

A 2D PC introduced into the ultrathin active layers of photodetecting devices can markedly improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency. We have observed 20 times enhancement at a specific wavelength in the photocurrent of a PC sample relative to an unpatterned one as a result of better Q-matching between the photonic band-edge modes and the material absorption. Our study may potentially be extended to obtain a wide-spectral response by careful engineering of the PC lattice to include several band-edge modes thus enabling ultrahigh-efficiency photovoltaic devices including ultrathin solar cells.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; optical lattices; photodetectors; silicon; solar cells; PC lattice; Q-matching; Si; material absorption; photocurrent enhancement; photodetecting devices; photoelectric conversion; photonic band-edge effect; photonic band-edge modes; ultrahigh-efficiency photovoltaic devices; ultrathin active layers; ultrathin solar cells; Dielectrics; Photonic crystals; Photonics; Q factor;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photonics Conference (IPC), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

Burlingame, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0731-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPCon.2012.6358520

Filename

6358520