Enhancement of optical visible wavelength region selective reflector for photovoltaic cell applications using a ternary photonic crystal

In a recent study, the authors proposed an optical broadband angular reflector having a band selective feature and high reflectivity rate for possible applications in photovoltaic applications using a binary photonic crystal. The obtained 100% reflectivity regions for TE and TM modes were in bandwidths of 244 nm and 134 nm, respectively. In this paper, we show theoretically the enhancement of the omnidirectional total-reflection wavelength range by using a ternary photonic crystal. By introducing a 30 nm-layer of Si3N4 between every two layers, constituting a period of the lattice, the regions of 100% reflectivity for TE and TM modes are improved to bandwidths of 269.641 nm and 155.364 nm, respectively. The improvement in the omnidirectional region is about 16%.