Solar PV Research: Continues research on the various ways to use plasmonic black metals could someday provide a pathway to more efficient photovoltaics (PV). Specifically to increase the efficiency of solar PV's photon capturing capacity.
Black metals are nanostructured metals designed to have low reflectivity and high absorption of visible and infrared light. A cover-page article in the May issue of Applied Physics Letters details how researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)'s Materials Engineering Division (MED) have made a breakthrough with experimentations on black metals. They investigated a plasmonic resonant structure tunable from ultra-violet to near infrared wavelengths with maximum absorbance strength over 95% due to a highly efficient coupling with incident light.
Additional harmonics were excited at higher frequencies extending the absorbance range to multiple wavelengths. They then proposed the concept of a plasmonic black metal nanoresonator that exhibits broadband absorbance characteristics by spacing the modes closer through increasing the resonator length and by employing adiabatic plasmonic nano-focusing on the tapered end of the cavity.
"Our article was picked for the cover story of Applied Physics Letters because it represents cutting-edge work in the area of plasmonics, the broadband operation obtained with a clear design and its implication for the photovoltaic yield," Said Tiziana C. Bond -- one of the paper editors. (reference)
Read the full Article HERE
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