Spherically shaped micro-structured antireflective surfaces

An antireflecting micro-structured interface, working in the resonance domain, and made from a bi-periodic array of semi-spherical hollowing-out in a silicon substrate is presented. Its parameters such as sphere radius and position of sphere centers from the surface are optimized numerically. A simple and robust process is described allowing such kind of antireflective surfaces to be fabricated for the infrared range. Spectral and angular reflectance measurement demonstrates the efficiency of the antireflective micro-structured interface which can easily be adapted for the visible range and for photovoltaic applications by a simple homothetic modification of the micro-structure typical dimensions. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America