Ultra-broadband near-perfect metamaterial absorber for photovoltaic applications

Abstract

An ingenious double-grating metamaterial-based ultrathin-broadband absorber consisting of AlGaAs–Ge–GaAs on a titanium film operating in the visible to infrared wavelength was designed in this work. This structure is capable of overcoming the Shockley–Queisser (SQ) limit and the tunneling junction effect of tandem solar cells. Our comprehensive study revealed the structure's absorption mechanism using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique, which exhibited excellent short-circuit current density and high absorption. Our proposed ultrathin structure of 410 nm thickness provided a high average absorption of 82.2% and 99.7% under unpolarized and TM-polarized light for a wavelength range of 450–2000 nm, respectively. Additionally, we observed high incidence angle tolerability under the plane wave and thermal stability over time for our proposed grating structure. The performance analysis of our proposed structure as an absorber layer of a solar cell revealed its high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 31.7% with an excellent short-circuit current density of 47.1 mA cm⁻² for AM 1.5 G solar irradiance. The double-grating metamaterial absorber structure has enormous potential for diverse applications such as solar harvesting, thermoelectric generation, and photodetection.