Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

SYOM: Intersectional Symposium Artificial Optical Materials

SYOM 1: Artificial Optical Materials

SYOM 1.4: Invited Talk

Monday, March 14, 2011, 16:15–16:45, HSZ 01

Using nanophotonic structures to overcome conventional limits in solar energy conversion — •Shanhui Fan — Ginzton Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, U.S.A.

The use of nanophotonic structures drastically alter the nature of light-matter interactions, and opens new opportunities for overcoming some of the conventional limits in solar energy conversion. In this talk, we show that broad-band nanoscale modal confinement can be used to achieve light trapping efficiencies that are far beyond the Yablonovitch limit. We also discuss some of our recent works on solar bandwidth compression, with the ultimate aim of overcoming the Shockley-Queisser limit using only single-junction solar cells.