Argia: a MATLAB-based RCWA simulator of optical diffraction by nano-textured silicon surfaces

The Argia optical simulator facilitates to describing nano-textured silicon surfaces with highly irregular reliefs intended for solar cell applications, and to analyze their reflectance and transmittance using the rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) method. Argia was programmed using MATLAB's object-oriented programming features. This makes the code easier to understand and provides an elegant syntax for defining nano-textured surfaces, materials, and illumination conditions. The discussion covers Argia's object-oriented design, the implementation of the RCWA method, and Argia's use. The latter is demonstrated through the modeling and simulation of one 0.5-square-micron silicon sample nano-textured with randomly distributed pyramids, and two 0.5-square-micron black silicon samples.