THESIS
2015
xv, 60 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
Solar energy is one of the most important clean energy on earth. With the utilization of solar
light, solar energy harvesting devices such as photovoltaic cells are able to generate electricity.
Increasing light absorption inside absorber materials becomes especially important in order to
increase device efficiency. Moreover, for the past several decades, nanostructures have
demonstrated their capabilities of both improving light management and reducing material
consumption. In order to conduct efficient nanostructure design optimization, simulation with
finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is utilized. With FDTD method, several
nanostructures with varieties of applications were studied: the nanospike (NSP) amorphous
silicon (a-Si) solar cells, the Polydimethylsiloxane (P...[
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Solar energy is one of the most important clean energy on earth. With the utilization of solar
light, solar energy harvesting devices such as photovoltaic cells are able to generate electricity.
Increasing light absorption inside absorber materials becomes especially important in order to
increase device efficiency. Moreover, for the past several decades, nanostructures have
demonstrated their capabilities of both improving light management and reducing material
consumption. In order to conduct efficient nanostructure design optimization, simulation with
finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is utilized. With FDTD method, several
nanostructures with varieties of applications were studied: the nanospike (NSP) amorphous
silicon (a-Si) solar cells, the Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) nanocones as anti-reflection (AR)
coating for cadmium telluride/ cadmium sulfide (CdTe/CdS) solar cells, photoelectrochemical
water splitting with ultrathin hematite on NSP structures, etc. Intriguingly, FDTD simulation
has the strength of clearly showing absorption properties inside nanostructures, which is
critical for the purpose of solar energy harvesting. Moreover, geometrical design has been
conducted to optimize the nanostructures for better device performance. Pitch of periodic
structures and aspect ratio of nanostructures are two common parameters to tune for geometry
optimization.
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