Figure 6. Absorption enhancement by all-polymer core-shell nanowires.

(a) Core-shell nanowire arrays are simulated on top of a conventional thin film solar cell composed of a silver back contact, an AZO layer, an amorphous silicon absorbent and an ITO front contact. (b) Directional and coupling-free NRM scattering enhances the light absorption in the amorphous silicon layer, which results in an enhancement factor of 14%. The enhancement at 300–500 nm is polarization-independent and attributable to forward scattering feature of NRM scattering (c), while enhancements in the 500–800 nm region are caused by the strong coupling between the absorber and enhancer regions (d), characterized by shifts between the absorption peaks associated with TE and TM polarizations in this range (cf. Fig. S8 for details). TE polarization is used for the investigation of absorption enhancement, TM polarization yields similar results.