Thin film (6,5) semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube metamaterial absorber for photovoltaic applications

A wide-band (6,5) single-walled carbon nanotube metamaterial absorber design with near unity absorption in the visible and ultraviolet frequency regions for solar cell applications is proposed. The frequency response of the proposed design provides wide-band with a maximum of 99.2% absorption. The proposed design is also simulated with (5,4), (6,4), (7,5), (9,4), and (10,3) chiralities, and results are compared to show that the proposed design works best with (6,5) carbon nanotube (CNT) but also good for other chiral CNTs in the visible and ultraviolet frequency region. The geometric structure was carefully analyzed for its contribution to the absorption behavior. The absorber design is highly flexible and capable of keeping the wide-band with high absorption. Due to the excellent symmetric characteristics of the proposed design, which provides polarization independency under normal incidence (transverse electromagnetic mode), the proposed metamaterial absorber is a good candidate for the solar cell application, where absorbance can be kept high with respect to the polarization angle.