Role of short-range order in manipulating light absorption in disordered media

Abstract

Structural correlations have a significant effect on light propagation in disordered media. We numerically investigate the role of short-range order in light absorption in thin films with disordered nanoholes. Two types of disordered distributions, including stealthy hyperuniform (SHU) and hard disk (HD) patterns with different degrees of short-range order, are studied. We find that Bragg scattering induced by short-range order results in the appearance of a gradually sharper absorption peak with the increasing of degrees of short-range order ($\chi$, $\varphi$). A physical model is proposed to calculate the in-plane angularly differential scattering cross section $d{\sigma }^{\ast }/d\theta$ of thin-film nanostructures with consideration of {the} structure factor $S(q)$. Results reveal that higher level of short-range order can enhance in-plane Bragg scattering in certain wavelengths and directions corresponding to rich and sharp peaks in {the} structure factor $S(q)$, which can further modify morphology-dependent-like resonances of an individual scatterer {and leads } to {large} improvement of absorptivity in thin films. Besides, the comparison results show that SHU structures exhibit better integrated absorption ($IA$) enhancement than both HD and periodic structures. And there is a transition of local-order phase between hexagonal lattice{s} and square lattice{s for SHU structures}, leading to an optimal absorption performance when $\chi$ is around 0.5 of interest. The present study paves a way in controlling light absorption and scattering using novel disordered nanostructures.

arXiv comment10 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (17)

• Local Density Fluctuations, Hyperuniformity, and Order Metrics
• Photon Management in Two-Dimensional Disordered Media
• Fundamental limit of light trapping in grating structures
• Isotropic Band Gaps and Freeform Waveguides Observed in Hyperuniform Disordered Photonic Solids
• Classical Disordered Ground States: Super-Ideal Gases, and Stealth and Equi-Luminous Materials
• Photonic band gap in isotropic hyperuniform disordered solids with low dielectric contrast
• Disorder-Induced Entanglement in Spin Ice Pyrochlores
• The Role of Short-Range Order and Hyperuniformity in the Formation of Band Gaps in Disordered Photonic Materials
• Transport, Geometrical and Topological Properties of Stealthy Disordered Hyperuniform Two-Phase Systems
• Light transport and localization in two-dimensional correlated disorder
• Collective Coordinate Control of Density Distributions
• Two-dimensional disorder for broadband, omnidirectional and polarization-insensitive absorption
• Photonic Band Gap Effects in Two-dimensional Polycrystalline and Amorphous Structures
• Double scattering of light from biophotonic nanostructures with short-range order
• Absorption control in pseudodisordered photonic-crystal thin film
• Light trapping in solar cells at the extreme coupling limit
• Light Trapping in Thin Film Disordered Nanohole Patterns: Effects of Oblique Incidence and Intrinsic Absorption

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Light in correlated disordered media
• Enhanced Absorption of Waves in Stealth Hyperuniform Disordered Media
• Absorption of scalar waves in correlated disordered media and its maximization using stealth hyperuniformity
• The dependent scattering effect on radiative properties of micro/nanoscale discrete disordered media
• Near-resonant light transmission in two-dimensional dense cold atomic media with short-range positional correlations
• Analysis of dependent scattering mechanism in hard-sphere Yukawa random media
• Structural correlations and dependent scattering mechanism on the radiative properties of random media
• Effective transport properties of conformal Voronoi-bounded columns via recurrent boundary element expansions