arXiv subjects

Eli Yablonovitch

Publications and source records attributed to Eli Yablonovitch.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

There Are Two Distinct Photon Gases Present Inside Every Solar Cell

It has gradually been recognized that incoming sunlight can be trapped within a high refractive index semiconductor, n~3.5, owing to the narrow 16degree escape cone. The solar light inside a semiconductor is 4n^2 times brighter than incident sunlight. This is called light trapping and has increased the theoretical and practical efficiency of solar panels. But there is a second photon gas of equal importance that has been overlooked. Inside every forward-biased solar cell there is a gas of infrared luminescence photons, also trapped by total internal reflection. We introduce the idea of super-equilibrium, when the luminescence photon gas freely exchanges energy with the two quasi-Fermi levels. Nonetheless, the loss of a single photon from either gas is equivalent to the loss of a precious minority carrier. Therefore optical modeling & design becomes equally important as electron-hole modeling in high efficiency solar cells. It becomes possible to approach the idealistic Shockley-Queisser limit, by proper material selection and design of the solar cell optics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Interpretable inverse-designed cavity for on-chip nonlinear and quantum optics

Inverse design is a powerful tool in wave-physics and in particular in photonics for compact, high-performance devices. To date, applications have mostly been limited to linear systems and it has rarely been investigated or demonstrated in the nonlinear regime. In addition, the "black box" nature of inverse design techniques has hindered the understanding of optimized inverse-designed structures. We propose an inverse design method with interpretable results to enhance the efficiency of on-chip photon generation rate through nonlinear processes by controlling the effective phase-matching conditions. We fabricate and characterize a compact, inverse-designed device using a silicon-on-insulator platform that allows a spontaneous four-wave mixing process to generate photon pairs at 1.1MHz with a coincidence to accidental ratio of 162. Our design method accounts for fabrication constraints and can be used for scalable quantum light sources in large-scale communication and computing applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Equivalence of coupled parametric oscillator dynamics to Lagrange multiplier primal-dual optimization

There has been a recent surge of interest in physics-based solvers for combinatorial optimization problems. We present a dynamical solver for the Ising problem that is comprised of a network of coupled parametric oscillators and show that it implements Lagrange multiplier constrained optimization. We show that the pump depletion effect, which is intrinsic to parametric oscillators, enforces binary constraints and enables the system's continuous analog variables to converge to the optimal binary solutions to the optimization problem. Moreover, there is an exact correspondence between the equations of motion for the coupled oscillators and the update rules in the primal-dual method of Lagrange multipliers. Though our analysis is performed using electrical LC oscillators, it can be generalized to any system of coupled parametric oscillators. We simulate the dynamics of the coupled oscillator system and demonstrate that the performance of the solver on a set of benchmark problems is comparable to the best-known results obtained by digital algorithms in the literature.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2021

Thermodynamics of light management in near-field thermophotovoltaics

We evaluate near-field thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy conversion systems focusing in particular on their open-circuit voltage (Voc). Unlike previous analyses based largely on numerical simulations with fluctuational electrodynamics, here, we develop an analytic model that captures the physics of near-field TPV systems and can predict their performance metrics. Using our model, we identify two important opportunities of TPV systems operating in the near-field. First, we show analytically that enhancement of radiative recombination is a natural consequence of operating in the near-field. Second, we note that, owing to photon recycling and minimal radiation leakage in near-field operation, the PV cell used in near-field TPV systems can be much thinner compared to those used in solar PV systems. Since non-radiative recombination is a volumetric effect, use of a thinner cell reduces non-radiative losses per unit area. The combination of these two opportunities leads to increasingly large values of Voc as the TPV vacuum gap decreases. Hence, although operation in the near-field was previously perceived to be beneficial for electrical power density enhancement, here, we emphasize that thin-film near-field TPVs are also significantly advantageous in terms of Voc and consequently conversion efficiency as well as power density. We provide numerical results for an InAs-based thin-film TPV that exhibits efficiency > 50% at an emitter temperature as low as 1100 K.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Physics Successfully Implements Lagrange Multiplier Optimization

Optimization is a major part of human effort. While being mathematical, optimization is also built into physics. For example, physics has the principle of Least Action, the principle of Minimum Entropy Generation, and the Variational Principle. Physics also has physical annealing which, of course, preceded computational Simulated Annealing. Physics has the Adiabatic Principle, which in its quantum form is called Quantum Annealing. Thus, physical machines can solve the mathematical problem of optimization, including constraints. Binary constraints can be built into the physical optimization. In that case the machines are digital in the same sense that a flip-flop is digital. A wide variety of machines have had recent success at optimizing the Ising magnetic energy. We demonstrate in this paper that almost all those machines perform optimization according to the Principle of Minimum Entropy Generation as put forth by Onsager. Further, we show that this optimization is in fact equivalent to Lagrange multiplier optimization for constrained problems. We find that the physical gain coefficients which drive those systems actually play the role of the corresponding Lagrange Multipliers.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2019

Electrical suppression of all nonradiative recombination pathways in monolayer semiconductors

Defects in conventional semiconductors substantially lower the photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY), a key metric of optoelectronic performance that directly dictates the maximum device efficiency. Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), such as monolayer MoS2, often exhibit low PL QY for as-processed samples, which has typically been attributed to a large native defect density. We show that the PL QY of as-processed MoS2 and WS2 monolayers reaches near-unity when they are made intrinsic by electrostatic doping, without any chemical passivation. Surprisingly, neutral exciton recombination is entirely radiative even in the presence of a high native defect density. This finding enables TMDC monolayers for optoelectronic device applications as the stringent requirement of low defect density is eased.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2018

Leveraging Continuous Material Averaging for Inverse Electromagnetic Design

Inverse electromagnetic design has emerged as a way of efficiently designing active and passive electromagnetic devices. This maturing strategy involves optimizing the shape or topology of a device in order to improve a figure of merit--a process which is typically performed using some form of steepest descent algorithm. Naturally, this requires that we compute the gradient of a figure of merit which describes device performance, potentially with respect to many design variables. In this paper, we introduce a new strategy based on smoothing abrupt material interfaces which enables us to efficiently compute these gradients with high accuracy irrespective of the resolution of the underlying simulation. This has advantages over previous approaches to shape and topology optimization in nanophotonics which are either prone to gradient errors or place important constraints on the shape of the device. As a demonstration of this new strategy, we optimize a non-adiabatic waveguide taper between a narrow and wide waveguide. This optimization leads to a non-intuitive design with a very low insertion loss of only 0.041 dB at 1550 nm.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Inverse Design of Near Unity Efficiency Perfectly Vertical Grating Couplers

Efficient coupling between integrated optical waveguides and optical fibers is essential to the success of integrated photonics. While many solutions exist, perfectly vertical grating couplers which scatter light out of a waveguide in the direction normal to the waveguide's top surface are an ideal candidate due to their potential to reduce packaging complexity. Designing such couplers with high efficiency, however, has proven difficult. In this paper, we use electromagnetic inverse design techniques to optimize a high efficiency two-layer perfectly vertical silicon grating coupler. Our base design achieves a chip-to-fiber coupling efficiency of over 99% (-0.04 dB) at 1550 nm. Using this base design, we apply subsequent constrained optimizations to achieve vertical couplers with over 96% efficiency which are fabricable using a 65 nm process.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Ultra-Efficient Thermophotovoltaics Exploiting Spectral Filtering by the Photovoltaic Band-Edge

Thermophotovotaics convert thermal radiation from local heat sources to electricity. A new breakthrough in creating highly efficient thin-film solar cells can potentially enable thermophotovoltaic systems with unprecedented high efficiency. The current 28.8% single-junction solar efficiency record, by Alta Devices, was achieved by recognizing that a good solar cell needs to reflect infrared band-edge radiation at the back surface, to effectively recycle infrared luminescent photons. The effort to reflect band-edge luminescence in solar cells has serendipitously created the technology to reflect all infrared wavelengths, which can revolutionize thermophotovoltaics. We have never before had such high back reflectivity for sub-bandgap radiation, permitting step-function spectral control for the first time. Thus, contemporary efficiency advances in solar photovoltaic cells create the possibility of realizing a $>50\%$ efficient thermophotovoltaic system.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2017

Short-Channel Field Effect Transistors with 9-Atom and 13-Atom wide Graphene Nanoribbons

Bottom-up synthesized GNRs and GNR heterostructures have promising electronic properties for high performance field effect transistors (FETs) and ultra-low power devices such as tunnelling FETs. However, the short length and wide band gap of these GNRs have prevented the fabrication of devices with the desired performance and switching behaviour. Here, by fabricating short channel (Lch ~20 nm) devices with a thin, high-k gate dielectric and a 9-atom wide (0.95 nm) armchair GNR as the channel material, we demonstrate FETs with high on-current (Ion >1 uA at Vd = -1 V) and high Ion/Ioff ~10^5 at room temperature. We find that the performance of these devices is limited by tunnelling through the Schottky barrier (SB) at the contacts and we observe an increase in the transparency of the barrier by increasing the gate field near the contacts. Our results thus demonstrate successful fabrication of high performance short-channel FETs with bottom-up synthesized armchair GNRs.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Pronounced Effect of pn-Junction Dimensionality on Tunnel Switch Threshold Shape

Designing tunneling junctions with abrupt on-off characteristics and high current densities is critical for many different devices including backward diodes and tunneling field effect transistors (TFETs). It is possible to get a sharp, high conductance on/off transition by exploiting the sharp step in the density of states at band edges. The nature of the density of states, is strongly dependent on quantum dimensionality. To know the current/voltage curve requires us to specify both the n-side dimensionality and the p-side dimensionality of pn junctions. We find that a typical bulk 3d-3d tunneling pn junction has only a quadratic turn-on function, while a pn junction consisting of two overlapping quantum wells (2d-2d) would have the preferred step function response. We consider nine physically distinguishable possibilities: 3d-3d, 2d-2dedge, 1d-1dend, 2d-3d, 1d-2d, 0d-1d, 2d-2dface, 1d-1dedge and 0d-0d. Thus we introduce the obligation to specify the dimensionality on either side of pn junctions. Quantum confinement, or reduced dimensionality on each side of a pn junction has the added benefit of significantly increasing the tunnel conductance at the turn-on threshold.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

HAMR Thermal Reliability via Inverse Electromagnetic Design

Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) has promise to allow for data writing in hard disks of beyond 1 Tb/in2 areal density, by temporarily heating the area of a single datum to its Curie temperature while simultaneously applying a magnetic field from a conventional electromagnet. However, the metallic optical antenna or near-field transducer (NFT) used to apply the nano-scale heating to the media may self-heat by several hundreds of degrees. With the NFT reaching such extreme temperatures, demonstrations of HAMR technology observe write-head lifetimes that are orders of magnitude less than that required for commercial product. Hence, thermal reliability of the NFT is of upmost importance. In this paper, we first derive fundamental limits on the self-heating of the NFT to drive design choices for low temperature operation. Next, we employ Inverse Electromagnetic Design software, which provides deterministic gradient-based optimization of electromagnetic structures with thousands of degrees of freedom using the adjoint method. The Inverse Design software solves for unintuitive solutions to Maxwells equations, and we present computationally generated structures for HAMR write-heads that offer a 40 percent or 170 C reduction in NFT self-heating compared to typical industry designs.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2014

Intermediate Mirrors to Reach Theoretical Efficiency Limits of Multi-Bandgap Solar Cells

Creating a single bandgap solar cell that approaches the Shockley-Queisser limit requires a highly reflective rear mirror. This mirror enhances the voltage of the solar cell by providing photons with multiple opportunities for escaping out the front surface. Efficient external luminescence is a pre-requisite for high voltage. Intermediate mirrors in a multijunction solar cell can enhance the voltage for each cell in the stack. These intermediate mirrors need to have the added function of transmitting the below bandgap photons to the next cell in the stack. In this work, we quantitatively establish the efficiency increase possible with the use of intermediate selective reflectors between cells in a tandem stack. The absolute efficiency increase can be up to ~6% in dual bandgap cells with optimal intermediate and rear mirrors. A practical implementation of an intermediate selective mirror is an air gap sandwiched by antireflection coatings. The air gap provides perfect reflection for angles outside the escape cone, and the antireflection coating transmits angles inside the escape cone. As the incoming sunlight is within the escape cone, it is transmitted on to the next cell, while most of the internally trapped luminescence is reflected.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2014

Strong interlayer coupling in van der Waals heterostructures built from single-layer chalcogenides

Semiconductor heterostructures are the fundamental platform for many important device applications such as lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar cells and high-electron-mobility transistors. Analogous to traditional heterostructures, layered transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) heterostructures can be designed and built by assembling individual single-layers into functional multilayer structures, but in principle with atomically sharp interfaces, no interdiffusion of atoms, digitally controlled layered components and no lattice parameter constraints. Nonetheless, the optoelectronic behavior of this new type of van der Waals (vdW) semiconductor heterostructure is unknown at the single-layer limit. Specifically, it is experimentally unknown whether the optical transitions will be spatially direct or indirect in such hetero-bilayers. Here, we investigate artificial semiconductor heterostructures built from single layer WSe2 and MoS2 building blocks. We observe a large Stokes-like shift of ~100 meV between the photoluminescence peak and the lowest absorption peak that is consistent with a type II band alignment with spatially direct absorption but spatially indirect emission. Notably, the photoluminescence intensity of this spatially indirect transition is strong, suggesting strong interlayer coupling of charge carriers. The coupling at the hetero-interface can be readily tuned by inserting hexagonal BN (h-BN) dielectric layers into the vdW gap. The generic nature of this interlayer coupling consequently provides a new degree of freedom in band engineering and is expected to yield a new family of semiconductor heterostructures having tunable optoelectronic properties with customized composite layers.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Light Trapping Textures Designed by Electromagnetic Optimization for Sub-Wavelength Thick Solar Cells

Light trapping in solar cells allows for increased current and voltage, as well as reduced materials cost. It is known that in geometrical optics, a maximum 4n^2 absorption enhancement factor can be achieved by randomly texturing the surface of the solar cell, where n is the material refractive index. This ray-optics absorption enhancement limit only holds when the thickness of the solar cell is much greater than the optical wavelength. In sub-wavelength thin films, the fundamental questions remain unanswered: (1) what is the sub-wavelength absorption enhancement limit and (2) what surface texture realizes this optimal absorption enhancement? We turn to computational electromagnetic optimization in order to design nanoscale textures for light trapping in sub-wavelength thin films. For high-index thin films, in the weakly absorbing limit, our optimized surface textures yield an angle- and frequency-averaged enhancement factor ~39. They perform roughly 30% better than randomly textured structures, but they fall short of the ray optics enhancement limit of 4n^2 ~ 50.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2012

Molecular imaging by optically-detected electron spin resonance of nitrogen-vacancies in nanodiamond

Molecular imaging refers to a class of noninvasive biomedical imaging techniques with the sensitivity and specificity to image biochemical variations in-vivo. An ideal molecular imaging technique visualizes a biochemical target according to a range of criteria, including high spatial and temporal resolution, high contrast relative to non-targeted tissues, depth-independent penetration into tissue, lack of harm to the organism under study, and low cost. Because no existing molecular imaging modality is ideal for all purposes, new imaging approaches are needed. Here we demonstrate a novel molecular imaging approach, called nanodiamond imaging, that uses nanodiamonds containing nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers as an imaging agent, and image nanodiamond targets in pieces of chicken breast. Nanodiamonds can be tagged with biologically active molecules so they bind to specific receptors; their distribution can then be quantified in-vivo via optically-detected magnetic resonance of the NVs. In effect, we are demonstrating Optically-Detected Functional-Electron-Spin-Resonance-Imaging, OD-f-ESRI. By combining optical detection with magnetic resonance, nanodiamond imaging achieves high sensitivity and high spatial resolution. It is absent of the complications of ionizing radiation, and the cost should be similar to all-optical imaging. Because nanodiamond imaging is limited by the depth of optical penetration into tissue to depths of a few cm, nanodiamond imaging should open up new avenues of investigation for applications where high depth penetration is not required, such as in small-animal imaging, tumor margin imaging, sentinel lymph node mapping, and perhaps mammography.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2011

Intense Internal and External Fluorescence as Solar Cells Approach the Shockley-Queisser Efficiency Limit

Absorbed sunlight in a solar cell produces electrons and holes. But, at the open circuit condition, the carriers have no place to go. They build up in density and, ideally, they emit external fluorescence that exactly balances the incoming sunlight. Any additional non-radiative recombination impairs the carrier density buildup, limiting the open-circuit voltage. At open-circuit, efficient external fluorescence is an indicator of low internal optical losses. Thus efficient external fluorescence is, counter-intuitively, a necessity for approaching the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit. A great Solar Cell also needs to be a great Light Emitting Diode. Owing to the narrow escape cone for light, efficient external emission requires repeated attempts, and demands an internal luminescence efficiency >>90%.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2010

Circuit Analysis in Metal-Optics

We provide electrical circuit descriptions for bulk plasmons, single surface plasmons, and parallel-plate plasmons. Simple circuits can reproduce the exactly known frequency versus wave-vector dispersion relations for all these cases, with reasonable accuracy. The circuit paradigm directly provides a characteristic wave-impedance, Zo, that is rarely discussed in the context of plasmonics. The case of a single-surface-plasmon is particularly interesting since it can be modeled as a transmission line, even though there is no return current conductor. The capacitance/unit length and the Faraday inductance/unit length, of a flat metal surface, are C'=2epsilon_okW, and L'=epsilon_o/2kW respectively, (where k is wave-vector, and W is the width of the flat metal surface). We believe that many other metal-optic geometries can be described within the circuit paradigm, with the prerequisite that the distributed capacitance and inductance must be calculated for each particular geometry

physics.optics↗