arXiv subjects

Christiane Becker

Publications and source records attributed to Christiane Becker.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

More than just light management -- The multiple advantages of nano- and micro-textures in perovskite solar cells

Perovskite-based solar cells have undergone rapid improvements over the last decade enabling highest power conversion efficiencies of single-junction and multi-junction devices. The implementation of nano- or micro-textures has played a major role in this development due to their ability to minimize reflection losses, maximize light trapping, and hence increase light harvesting in the active layer. In the slipstream of these advances, it has become apparent that nano- and micro-textures can also have many other collateral benefits beyond light management. In this article, very recently reported texture-related benefits for perovskite-based solar cells different from light management are reviewed. These are namely (1) improved film wetting from perovskite-solution, (2) enhanced perovskite crystallinity in terms of grain size, crystal orientation and phase homogeneity, (3) enhanced carrier extraction leading to higher open-circuit voltages, and potentially (4) increased mechanical stability upon bending in flexible devices and reduced residual stress. This survey helps to understand textures as a holistic concept to further improve perovskite-based solar cells, photodetectors and light emitting diodes.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2026

How do sub-bandgap reflectors affect the performance of PV modules?

Sub-bandgap reflectors (SBR) can reduce the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) modules by reflecting the near-infrared region of the solar spectrum with photon energies smaller than the electronic bandgap of the solar cell absorber material. We consider an ideal SBR, which reflects 100 % of non-harvestable low-energy photons but does not alter the reflectivity of the PV module for usable high-energy photons, and estimate how reducing the module temperature with the SBR affects the annual and the cumulative energy yield of silicon PV modules for six locations in North America and Europe. An ideal SBR would increase the annual energy yield between 1.0 % and 1.5 % for open-rack mounted modules and between 1.6 % and 2.4 % for close-roof mounted PV modules. Whether a non-ideal SBR provides a benefit in actual deployments strongly depends on the location and the optical properties of the coating. Beyond effects on the instantaneous power conversion efficiency and hence the annual energy yield, reducing the temperature by a SBR might also reduce the degradation and increase the overall lifetime of the PV module. By describing degradation using a simple Arrhenius approach using typical activation energies between 0.4 eV and 0.8 eV, we find that an ideal SBR increases the cumulative energy yield over 30 years between 2.2 % and 4.0 % for an open-rack mounted PV module in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2026

Inverse Design of Optical Multilayer Thin Films using Robust Masked Diffusion Models

Inverse design of optical multilayer stacks seeks to infer layer materials, thicknesses, and ordering from a desired target spectrum. It is a long-standing challenge due to the large design space and non-unique solutions. We introduce \texttt{OptoLlama}, a masked diffusion language model for inverse thin-film design from optical spectra. Representing multilayer stacks as sequences of material-thickness tokens, \texttt{OptoLlama} conditions generation on reflectance, absorptance, and transmittance spectra and learns a probabilistic mapping from optical response to structure. Evaluated on a representative test set of 3,000 targets, \texttt{OptoLlama} reduces the mean absolute spectral error by 2.9-fold relative to a nearest-neighbor template baseline and by 3.45-fold relative to the state-of-the-art data-driven baseline, called \texttt{OptoGPT}. Case studies on designed and expert-defined targets show that the model reproduces characteristic spectral features and recovers physically meaningful stack motifs, including distributed Bragg reflectors. These results establish diffusion-based sequence modeling as a powerful framework for inverse photonic design.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

How nanotextured interfaces influence the electronics in perovskite solar cells

Perovskite solar cells have reached power conversion efficiencies that rival those of established silicon photovoltaics. Nanotextures in perovskite solar cells scatter the incident light, thereby improving optical absorption. In addition, experiments show that nanotextures impact electronic performance, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigates the underlying theoretical reasons by combining multi-dimensional optical and charge-transport simulations for a single-junction perovskite solar cell. Our numerical results reveal that texturing redistributes the electric field, influencing carrier accumulation and recombination dynamics. We find that moderate texturing heights ($\leq 300$ nm) always increase the power conversion efficiency, regardless of surface recombination velocities. Our study also clarifies why experiments have reported that texturing both increased and reduced open-circuit voltages in perovskite solar cells: this behaviour originates from variations in surface recombination at the untextured electron transport layer. In contrast, surface recombination at the textured hole transport layer strongly affects the short-circuit current density, with lower recombination rates keeping it closer to the optical ideal. These findings provide new insights into the opto-electronic advantages of texturing and offer guidance for the design of next-generation textured perovskite-based solar cells, light emitting diodes, and photodetectors.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2024

Modeling luminescent coupling in multi-junction solar cells: Perovskite Silicon tandem case study

Luminescent coupling is a characteristic of multi-junction solar cells which has often been neglected in models of their performance. The effect describes the absorption of light emitted from a higher band gap semiconductor by a lower band gap semiconductor. In this way, light which might have been lost can be utilized for current generation. We present a framework for modeling this effect in both planar layer stacks and devices with periodic nanostructuring. As a case study, we evaluate how luminescent coupling is affected by the inclusion of nanostructuring in a perovskite silicon tandem solar cell. We find that nanostructuring, while reducing the reflection loss for tandem solar cells also reduces the luminescent coupling, allowing more light to be emitted to the surroundings, when compared to planar devices. This highlights the need to include modeling of this effect into optimization schemes in order to find the trade-off between these two effects. The published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3023941.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Double-Layer Metasurface for Enhanced Photon Up-Conversion

We present a double-layer dielectric metasurface obtained by stacking a silicon nanodisc array and a silicon photonic crystal slab with equal periodicity on top of each other. We focus on the investigation of electric near-field enhancement effects occurring at resonant excitation of the metasurface and study its optical properties numerically and experimentally. We find that the major difference in multi-layer metasurfaces when compared to conventional single-layer structures appears to be in Rayleigh-Wood anomalies: they are split into multiple different modes which are themselves spectrally broadened. As a proof of concept we cover a double-layer metasurface with a lanthanide-doped up-conversion particle layer and study its interaction with a 1550 nm photoexcitation. We observe a 2.7-fold enhancemed up-conversion photoluminescence by using the stacked metasurface instead of a planar substrate, although only around 1% of the up-conversion material is exposed to enhanced near-fields. Two mechanisms are identified explaining this behavior: First, enhanced near-fields when exciting the metasurface resonantly, and second, light trapping by total internal reflection in the particle layer when the metasurface redirects light into high-angle diffraction orders. These results pave the way for low-threshold and, in particular, broadband photon up-conversion in future solar energy and biosensing applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells: Effect of luminescent coupling and bifaciality

The power conversion efficiency of the market-dominating silicon photovoltaics approaches its theoretical limit. Bifacial solar operation with harvesting additional light impinging on the module back and the perovskite/silicon tandem device architecture are among the most promising approaches for further increasing the energy yield from a limited area. Here, we calculate the energy output of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells in monofacial and bifacial operation considering, for the first time, luminescent coupling between two sub-cells. For energy yield calculations we study idealized solar cells at both, standard testing as well as realistic weather conditions in combination with a detailed illumination model for periodic solar panel arrays. Considering typical, experimental photoluminescent quantum yield values we find that more than 50% of excess electron-hole pairs in the perovskite top cell can be utilized by the silicon bottom cell by means of luminescent coupling. As a result, luminescent coupling strongly relaxes the constraints on the top-cell bandgap in monolithic tandem devices. In combination with bifacial operation, the optimum perovskite bandgap shifts from 1.71 eV to the range 1.60-1.65 eV where already high-quality perovskite materials exist. The results can hence change a paradigm in developing the optimum perovskite material for tandem solar cells.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Nanopatterned Sapphire Substrates in Deep-UV LEDs: Is there an Optical Benefit?

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) in the deep ultra-violet (DUV) offer new perspectives for multiple applications ranging from 3D printing to sterilization. However, insufficient light extraction severely limits their efficiency. Nanostructured sapphire substrates in aluminum nitride based LED devices have recently shown to improve crystal growth properties, while their impact on light extraction has not been fully verified. We present a model for understanding the impact of nanostructures on the light extraction capability of DUV-LEDs. The model assumes an isotropic light source in the semiconductor layer stack and combines rigorously computed scattering matrices with a multilayer solver. We find that the optical benefit of using a nanopatterned as opposed to a planar sapphire substrate to be negligible, if parasitic absorption in the p-side of the LED is dominant. If losses in the p-side are reduced to 20%, then for a wavelength of 265 nm an increase of light extraction efficiency from 7.8% to 25.0% is possible due to nanostructuring. We introduce a concept using a diffuse ('Lambertian') reflector as p-contact, further increasing the light extraction efficiency to 34.2%. The results underline that transparent p-sides and reflective p-contacts in DUV-LEDs are indispensable for enhanced light extraction regardless of the interface texture between semiconductor and sapphire substrate. The optical design guidelines presented in this study will accelerate the development of high-efficiency DUV-LEDs, but the model is also readily applicable to other multilayer opto-electronic nanostructured devices such as photovoltaics or photodetectors.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Minimising the Levelised Cost of Electricity for Bifacial Solar Panel Arrays using Bayesian Optimisation

Bifacial solar module technology is a quickly growing market in the photovoltaics (PV) sector. By utilising light impinging on both, front and back sides of the module, actual limitations of conventional monofacial solar modules can be overcome at almost no additional costs. Optimising large-scale bifacial solar power plants with regard to minimum levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), however, is challenging due to the vast amount of free parameters such as module inclination angle and distance, module and land costs, character of the surroundings, weather conditions and geographic position. We present a detailed illumination model for bifacial PV modules in a large PV field and calculate the annual energy yield exemplary for two locations with different climates. By applying the Bayesian optimisation algorithm we determine the global minimum of the LCOE for bifacial and monofacial PV fields at these two exemplary locations considering land costs in the model. We find that currently established design guidelines for mono- and bifacial solar farms often do not yield the minimum LCOE. Our algorithm finds solar panel configurations yielding up to 23 % lower LCOE compared to the established configuration with the module tilt angle equal to the latitude and the module distance chosen such that no mutual shading of neighboring solar panels occurs at winter solstice. Our algorithm enables the user to extract clear design guidelines for mono- and bifacial large-scale solar power plants for most regions on Earth and further accelerates the development of competitively viable photovoltaic systems.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Distortion analysis of crystalline and locally quasicrystalline 2D photonic structures with GISAXS

In this study, grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) is used to collect statistical information on dimensional parameters in an area of 20 mm x 15 mm on photonic structures produced by nanoimprint lithography. The photonic structures are composed of crystalline and locally quasicrystalline two-dimensional patterns with structure sizes between about 100 nm and 10 $\mu$m to enable broadband visible light absorption for use in solar energy harvesting. These first GISAXS measurements on locally quasicrystalline samples demonstrate that GISAXS is capable of showing the locally quasicrystalline nature of the samples while at the same time revealing the long-range periodicity introduced due to the lattice design. We describe the scattering qualitatively in the framework of the distorted wave Born approximation using a hierarchical model mirroring the sample design, which consists of a rectangular and locally quasicrystalline supercell which is repeated periodically to fill the whole surface. The nanoimprinted samples are compared to a sample manufactured using electron beam lithography and the distortions of the periodic and locally quasiperiodic samples are quantified statistically. Due to the high sensitivity of GISAXS to deviations from the perfect lattice, the misalignment of the crystallographic axes was measured with a resolution of 0.015{\deg}, showing distortions up to +/- 0.15{\deg} in the investigated samples.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Nanophotonic enhanced two-photon excited photoluminescence of perovskite quantum dots

All-inorganic CsPbBr3 perovskite colloidal quantum dots have recently emerged as promising material for a variety of optoelectronic applications, among others for multi-photon-pumped lasing. Nevertheless, high irradiance levels are generally required for such multi-photon processes. One strategy to enhance the multi-photon absorption is taking advantage of high local light intensities using photonic nanostructures. Here, we investigate two-photon-excited photoluminescence of CsPbBr3 perovskite quantum dots on a silicon photonic crystal slab. By systematic excitation of optical resonances using a pulsed near-infrared laser beam, we observe an enhancement of two-photon-pumped photoluminescence by more than one order of magnitude when comparing to using a bulk silicon film. Experimental and numerical analyses allow relating these findings to near-field enhancement effects on the nanostructured silicon surface. The results reveal a promising approach for significant decreasing the required irradiance levels for multi-photon processes being of advantage in applications like low-threshold lasing, biomedical imaging, lighting and solar energy.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Antireflective nanotextures for monolithic perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells

Recently, we studied the effect of hexagonal sinusoidal textures on the reflective properties of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells using the finite element method (FEM). We saw that such nanotextures, applied to the perovskite top cell, can strongly increase the current density utilization from 91% for the optimized planar reference to 98% for the best nanotextured device (period 500 nm and peak-to-valley height 500~nm), where 100% refers to the Tiedje-Yablonovitch limit. In this manuscript we elaborate on some numerical details of that work: we validate an assumption based on the Tiedje-Yablonovitch limit, we present a convergence study for simulations with the finite-element method, and we compare different configurations for sinusoidal nanotextures.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2018

Machine learning classification for field distributions of photonic modes

Machine learning techniques can reveal hidden structure in large data amounts and can potentially extent or even replace analytical scientific methods. In nanophotonics, modes can increase the light yield from emitters located inside the nanostructure or near the surface. Optimizing such systems enforces to systematically analyze large amounts of three-dimensional field distribution data. We present a method based on finite element simulations and machine learning for the identification of modes with large field energies and specific spatial properties. By clustering we reduce the field distribution data to a minimal subset of prototypes. The predictive power of the approach is demonstrated using an analysis of experimentally measured fluorescence enhancement of quantum dots on a photonic crystal surface. The clustering method can be used for any optimization task that depends on three-dimensional field data, and is therefore relevant for biosensing, quantum dot solar cells or photon upconversion.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

Smooth anti-reflective three-dimensional textures for liquid-phase crystallized silicon thin-film solar cells on glass

Recently, liquid-phase crystallization of thin silicon films has emerged as a promising candidate for thin-film photovoltaics. On 10 \mu m thin absorbers, wafer-equivalent morphologies and open-circuit voltages were reached, leading to a record efficiency of 12.1%. However, short-circuit current densities are still limited, mainly due to optical losses at the glass-silicon interface. While nano-structures at this interface have been shown to efficiently reduce reflection, up to now these textures caused an increase in recombination. Therefore, optical gains were mitigated due to electronic losses. Here, the SMooth Anti-Reflective Three-dimensional (SMART) texture is introduced in order to overcome this trade-off. By smoothing nanoimprinted SiOx nano-pillar arrays with spin-coated TiOx layers, light-trapping properties of laser-crystallized silicon solar cells could significantly be improved as successfully shown in three-dimensional simulations and in experiment. At the same time, the smooth surface morphology of SMART textures allows preserving electronic material quality equivalent to that of planar reference samples and reaching Voc values above 640 mV in 8 \mu m thin liquid-phase crystallized silicon solar cells. Furthermore, the short-circuit current density jsc could be increased from 21.0 mA cm-2 for planar reference cells with already optimized anti-reflective interlayer stacks to 23.3 mA cm-2 on SMART textures, corresponding to a relative increase of 11%.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Deterministic aperiodic composite lattice-structured silicon thin films for photon management

Exotic manipulation of the flow of photons in nanoengineered semiconductor materials with an aperiodic distribution of nanostructures plays a key role in efficiency-enhanced and industrially viable broadband photonic technologies. Through a generic deterministic nanotechnological route, in addition to periodic, transversely quasicrystallographic or disordered random photonic lattices, here we show scalable nanostructured semiconductor thin films on large area nanoimprinted substrates up to 4cm^2 with advanced functional features of aperiodic composite nanophotonic lattices having tailorable supercell tiles. The richer Fourier spectra of the presented artificially nanostructured materials with well-defined lattice point morphologies are designed functionally akin to two-dimensional incommensurate intergrowth aperiodic lattices-comprising periodic photonic crystals and in-plane quasicrystals as subgroups. The composite photonic lattice-structured crystalline silicon thin films with tapered nanoholes or nanocone-nanoholes are presented showing up to +30 % achievable short circuit current density in comparison to a periodic counterpart where as it is up to +190 % in comparison to a reference unstructured silicon thin film of 300 nanometers of thickness. In view of scalable bottom-up integrated device fabrication processes, the structural analysis is further extended to liquid phase crystallized double-side-textured deterministic aperiodic lattice-structured 10 micrometers thick large area crystalline silicon film.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗