TWO APPROACHES FOR INCOHERENT PROPAGATION OF LIGHT IN RIGOROUS NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS

In multidimensional numerical simulations of optoelec- tronic devices the rigorous Maxwell equations are solved in difierent ways. However, numerically e-cient incoherent propagation of light inside the layers has not been resolved yet. In this paper we present two time- and resource-e-cient approaches for optical simulations of incoherent layers embedded in multilayer structures: (a) phase match- ing and (b) phase elimination approach. The approaches for simulat- ing the incoherent propagation of light in thick layers are derived from Maxwell equations. Both approaches can be applied to any layer in the structure regardless of the position inside the structure and the number of incoherent layers. In rigorous simulations, for low absorbing thick layers scaling down the thickness and increasing extinction coe-cient of the layer proportionally is implemented to shorten computational time. The simulation results are verifled with the experiment on two types of structures: a bare glass incoherent layer and an amorphous silicon solar cell.