I'm using Sentaurus TCAD to simulate thin film solar cells in two dimensions. Using the natively one-dimensional TMM solver produces some convergence difficulties: presumably a single dimensional optical generation profile is insufficient in my structure.
I can successfully introduce light into my system using Raytracing(), but I'd like to be able to at least try to include the thin film interference effect from my top layer (200 nm Zinc Oxide).
Using RayTraceBC{ TMM () } is straightforward for internal interfaces. But since ZnO is my top layer, I have no 'reference=' material to provide the TMM boundary condition.
I have not defined the outside air explicitly when I build my structure in sde. I have at one stage tried to add a layer of material="Gas" above the ZnO (and its cathode contact), but doing so seems to open up another round of convergence or simulation issues [the issue is unclear but I have no helpful error message, just a generic failure message].
The Raytracing solver itself understands that the surrounding material is air, by default. Does this default region have an internal region or material name that can be used as the 'Reference=' material in the TMM RayTraceBC? Or is there some other way to declare device-surface thin film interference effects in the Raytracing optical solver?
As an update, the convergence issues I was experiencing with the gas layer could be solved by explicit declaration of the complex refractive index (there appears no default behaviour). This question is therefore more of a point of interest, although I have a slightly related one for which I will start a new thread.
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