Recent Advances of Plasmonic Solar Cells
Ali Abdolahzadeh Ziabari
Department of Physics, Lahijan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
Email: [email protected]
Abstract- Plasmonic solar cells (PSCs) are a part of third generation of solar cells that use the scattering from noble metal nanoparticles excited at their localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). A thin silicon sheet does not absorb light very well. For this reason, more light needs to be scattered across the surface in order to increase the absorption of Si to convert it into the useful electrical energy.
Metal nanoparticles help to scatter the incoming light across the surface of the layer at resonance wavelengths (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Schematic view of light loss decrement due to presence of plasmonic NPs.
Silver and Gold are the common metallic nanoparticles for the PSCs uses. However, because of high cost and high temperature that they produce during the work, there is a general tendency to develop new alternatives for Au and Ag. This has caused a rapidly growing new area of research in the recent years. In addition to the type of the plasmonic NPs, their shape and size have also very strong effect on the performance of the solar cells. Zhang et al. simulations on a regular array of Al NPs of different size and period resulted in an increase of the cell absorption up to 40%
for 100 nm diameter NPs with a 150 nm period [1]. Embed metallic nanoparticles within the active layer of the device can lead to an increase of the cell efficiency not only by light trapping via scattering effects, but also by near-field amplification in the close proximity of the NPs [2].
References
[1] Zhang D, et al. Aluminum nanoparticles enhanced light absorption in silicon solar cell by surface plasmon resonance. Opt Quant Electron 2015; 47:1421–7.
[2] Ye F. et al. Embedded metallic nanopatterns for enhanced optical absorption.
In: Proceedings of SPIE, next generation (nano) photonic and cell technologies for solar energy conversion II, vol. 8111; 1-7, Sept 2011. p. 811103.
