Design and fabrication of a diffractive optical element as a spectrum-splitting solar concentrator for lateral multijunction solar cells.

We have designed a single thin planar diffractive optical element (DOE) based on the principle of diffractive optics to simultaneously split and concentrate the incident light into several energy ranges for lateral multijunction solar cells. A prototype with the maximum thickness of 6.95 µm and 32 quantized levels in depth was fabricated by photolithographic technology. The spectrum-splitting and concentrating performance of the prototype, which were measured quantitatively, show good agreement with the simulation results. As mass production of a DOE can be produced by imprint technology, our design provides a feasible means for low-cost, large-scale, and high-efficiency photovoltaic applications.