TY - JOUR AU1 - Ye, Fan AU2 - Burns, Michael J. AU3 - Naughton, Michael J. AB - Novel metallic nanopatterns integrated with semiconductor films form optical metamaterials that can enable enhanced absorption. When employed in photovoltaics, such integrated nanostructures may facilitate significant increases in power conversion efficiency. Here, we show that metal nanopatterns embedded within a semiconductor, as opposed to being situated at/on the surface(s), exhibit absorbance enhancements that exceed those yielded by surface patterns. We show in computer simulations and experiments that absorbance in amorphous silicon can be enhanced many-fold for embedded metal nanopatterns (EMN) in ultrathin silicon films in particular wavelength regimes. Compared to plane α-Si films of comparable thickness, a several hundred percent enhancement is observed. This represents a potential route to high efficiency solar power with ultrathin absorbers enhanced by EMN-based optical metamedia. TI - Embedded metallic nanopatterns for enhanced optical absorption JF - Proceedings of SPIE DO - 10.1117/12.892618 DA - 2011-09-08 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/spie/embedded-metallic-nanopatterns-for-enhanced-optical-absorption-sBccffBhYw SP - 811103 EP - 811103-7 VL - 8111 IS - 1 DP - DeepDyve ER -