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Abstract:The quest for increased efficiency of solar cells has driven the research in synthesizing photovoltaic cells involving Si based materials. The efficiency of solar cells involving crystalline Si is stalled around 25% for the last decade. Recently Shi et al. had shown that light trapping can be enhanced by fabricating double layers of Ag nanoparticles in silicon based materials. The light trapping is critically important in a photo devices such as solar cells in order to increase light absorption and efficiency. In the present work, we report enhancement in the absorption of light in Ag ion implanted Si substrates. Multiple low energies Ag ions, ranging from ~80 keV to ~30 keV, with different fluences ranging from ~1×1016 to ~1×10 17 atoms/cm 2 were sequentially implanted into commercially available Si (100) substrates followed by post-thermal annealing to create different sizes of Ag nanoclusters (NC) at different depths in the top 100 nm of the Si. The absorbance of light is increased in Ag implanted Si with a significant increase in the current collection in I-V (current-voltage) photo switching measurements. The experimental photovoltaic cells fabricated with the Agimplanted Si samples were optically characterized under AM (air mass) 1.5 solar radiation conditions (~1.0 kW/m 2 ). An enhancement in the charge collection were measured in the annealed samples, where prominent Ag NCs were formed in the Si matrix compared to the as-implanted samples with amorphous layers. We believe the enhancement of the photocurrent density from the samples with Ag NC is due to the improvement of efficiency of charge collection of e --h + pairs produced by the incident light.

Articles you may be interested inResistive switching characteristics in dielectric/ferroelectric composite devices improved by post-thermal annealing at relatively low temperature Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 092903 (2014) were sequentially implanted into Si(100) to create a distribution of different sizes and densities of buried metal nanoclusters (NC) at the near-surface layers. These structures have applications in fields involving plasmonics, optical emitters, photovoltaic, and nano-electronics. The dimension, location and concentration of these NCs influence the type of the applications. The implantation profiles were simulated by utilizing the widely used Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) code as well as a dynamic-TRIM code, which accounts for surface sputtering. The implanted samples were subsequently annealed either in a gas mixture of 4% H 2 + 96% Ar or in vacuum at a temperature ~500 ºC up to 90 minutes. The annealing was carried out below the eutectic temperature (~ 841 ºC) of Ag-Si to preferentially synthesize Ag NCs in Si rather than silicide. In order to study the size, concentration and distribution of the Ag NCs in Si, the samples were characterized by Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in combination with Ar-ion etching, and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) techniques. The annealed samples showed a preferential distribution of the Ag NCs' sizes up to 10 nm either near the surface region (< 25nm) or at deeper layers (60-80 nm) closer to the interface of the implanted layer with the crystalline Si substrate. Ag NCs of larger diameters (up to 15 nm) were seen in the annealed sample near the peak concentration positions (~35-55 nm) of the implanted Ag ions. We have investigated the optical absorption properties due to these nano-structures in Si. The multiple energy implanted samples annealed in a gas mixture of 4% H 2 + 96% Ar show enhancements in the optical absorption in the visible range.

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