Dielectric and metallic photonic architectures can enhance light matter interaction by concentrating the electric field through resonances, increasing the light optical path by diffraction and many other interesting phenomena that cannot be achieved with traditional lenses and mirrors. Additionally, these architectures can surpass the upper limit of absorption enhancement for conventional light trapping schemes, becoming the ideal candidates to boost the light harvesting efficiency of many photovoltaic technologies. Furthermore, these photonic architectures have potential applications in many other optoelectronic devices, such as near field sensors and light emitters, where being able to concentrate or extract light efficiently is most valuable. However, the implementation of photonic architectures in actual devices has been limited by the expensive and low yield manufacturing processes involved in their fabrication.
ENLIGHTMENT is focused in the design, fabrication and characterization of a variety of photonic architectures to optically enhance the performance of emerging optoelectronic devices. To do so, we will investigate the fundaments of the enhanced light-matter interaction observed in devices that use wave optics elements and, design the optimum photonic nanostructure for each device type using current numerical simulation tools. We rely on unconventional nanofabrication routes such as soft nanolithography, transfer printing, etc. to fabricate photonic architectures that will exhibit exciting optical properties outperforming those fabricated with conventional lithographies, while easily and inexpensively incorporated in large area devices. Optically enhanced optoelectronic devices will be fabricated and optically and electrically characterized. Many optoelectronic devices can benefit from a new generation of photonic electrodes than can be easily implemented within their components. Seamless integration within current devices can be achieved if along with their optical functionality, these novel photonic electrodes also exhibit charge collection and transport capacities, potentially replacing conventional flat conductive electrodes.
