Aperiodic and randomized dielectric mirrors: alternatives to metallic back reflectors for solar cells

Dielectric mirrors have recently emerged for solar cells due to the advantages of lower cost, lower temperature processing, higher throughput, and zero plasmonic absorption as compared to conventional metallic counterparts. Nonetheless, in the past, efforts for incorporating dielectric mirrors into photovoltaics were not successful due to limited bandwidth and insufficient light scattering that prevented their wide usage. In this work, it is shown that the key for ultra-broadband dielectric mirrors is aperiodicity, or randomization. In addition, it has been proven that dielectric mirrors can be widely applicable to thin-film and thick wafer-based solar cells to provide for light trapping comparable to conventional metallic back reflectors at their respective optimal geometries. Finally, the near-field angular emission plot of Poynting vectors is conducted, and it further confirms the superior light-scattering property of dielectric mirrors, especially for diffuse medium reflectors, despite the absence of surface plasmon excitation. The preliminary experimental results also confirm the high feasibility of dielectric mirrors for photovoltaics. (C)2014 Optical Society of America