Efficient Volumetric Method of Moments for Modeling Plasmonic Thin-Film Solar Cells with Periodic Structures

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient volumetric method of moments using a preconditioned volume integral equation and periodic Green's functions to model plasmonic thin-film solar cells, improving computational efficiency and enabling detailed optical response analysis.

Contribution

A novel preconditioned volumetric method of moments with periodic Green's functions for accurate and efficient modeling of plasmonic solar cells.

Findings

Enhanced convergence and computational efficiency in modeling.

Observed super-Lambertian absorption at plasmon resonance.

Detailed analysis of optical absorption dependence on wavelength and incident angle.

Abstract

Metallic nanoparticles (NPs) support localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs), which enable to concentrate sunlight at the active layer of solar cells. However, full-wave modeling of the plasmonic solar cells faces great challenges in terms of huge computational workload and bad matrix condition. It is tremendously difficult to accurately and efficiently simulate near-field multiple scattering effects from plasmonic NPs embedded into solar cells. In this work, a preconditioned volume integral equation (VIE) is proposed to model plasmonic organic solar cells (OSCs). The diagonal block preconditioner is applied to different material domains of the device structure. As a result, better convergence and higher computing efficiency are achieved. Moreover, the calculation is further accelerated by two-dimensional periodic Green's functions. Using the proposed method, the dependences of optical absorption on the wavelengths and incident angles are investigated. Angular responses of the plasmonic OSCs show the super-Lambertian absorption on the plasmon resonance but near-Lambertian absorption off the plasmon resonance. The volumetric method of moments and explored physical understanding are of great help to investigate the optical responses of OSCs.