Efficient Broadband Light Absorption in a Bioinspired Silicon Photonic Structure

• Published in: Journal of physical chemistry. C Vol. 128; no. 20; pp. 8522 - 8530
• Main Authors: Hossain, Toiyob, Mamun, Abdul Ahad, Islam, Fariba, Hassan, Mohammad Muntasir
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 23-05-2024
• Subjects: C: Physical Properties of Materials and Interfaces
• ISSN: 1932-7447; 1932-7455
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.4c01827

Inspired by the near-perfect light-harvesting mechanism in the phycobilisome complex of cyanobacterial cells, a hemicylindrical antenna-shaped photonic structure is proposed and analyzed in the present work for photovoltaic, photonic, and photochemistry applications. Results from finite difference time domain method-based analysis reveal that a cSi-based photonic structure with identical dimensions of the phycobilisome has a very low absorption efficiency in the peak solar wavelength regime. However, by scaling up and optimizing the geometric parameters of the antenna-like photonic structure, a light absorption efficiency of 90.5% can be achieved within a broad wavelength range of 400 to 900 nm. Besides being polarization-insensitive in terms of absorption, the optimized structure exhibits extraordinary dichroism property at a 45° angle of incidence. In addition, calculated electrical performance of the optimized structure is highly promising with a 21.05% photoconversion efficiency as a single-junction solar cell. Such encouraging polarization-insensitive broadband absorption properties and photoconversion efficiency on the silicon platform make the proposed bioinspired photonic structure an excellent candidate for a plethora of applications in photochemistry, optical detection, photovoltaics, and other photonic applications.