title: Optimal design of aperiodic, vertical silicon nanowire structures for photovoltaics.
abstract: We design a partially aperiodic, vertically-aligned silicon nanowire array that maximizes photovoltaic absorption. The optimal structure is obtained using a random walk algorithm with transfer matrix method based electromagnetic forward solver. The optimal, aperiodic structure exhibits a 2.35 times enhancement in ultimate efficiency compared to its periodic counterpart. The spectral behavior mimics that of a periodic array with larger lattice constant. For our system, we find that randomly-selected, aperiodic structures invariably outperform the periodic array.
authors.affiliation: Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. chenxil@usc.edu
authors.forename: Chenxi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Michelle L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Povinelli