A non-resonant dielectric metamaterial for the enhancement of thin-film solar cells

Recently, we have suggested a dielectric metamaterial composed of an array of submicron dielectric spheres located on top of an amorphous thin-film solar cell. We have theoretically shown that this metamaterial can decrease the reflection and simultaneously suppress the transmission through the photovoltaic layer because it transforms the incident plane wave into a set of focused light beams. This theoretical concept has been strongly developed and experimentally confirmed in the present paper. Here we consider the metamaterial for oblique angle illumination, redesign the solar cell and present a detailed experimental study of the whole structure. In contrast to our previous theoretical study we show that our omnidirectional light-trapping structure may operate better than the optimized flat coating obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.