Light-Trapping Characteristics of Ag Nanoparticles for Enhancing the Energy Conversion Efficiency of Hybrid Solar Cells

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the optical and electrical characteristics of hybrid solar cells using silicon pyramid/Ag nanoparticle and nanowire/Ag nanoparticle nanocomposite structures, which are obtained by the Ag-assisted electroless etching method. We introduced the application of the physical and chemical properties of Ag nanoparticles on four kinds of solar cells: silicon pyramid, silicon pyramid/PEDOT:PSS, silicon nanowire, and silicon nanowire/PEDOT:PSS. We simulated the absorption of these structures for different parameters. Furthermore, we also show the result of the current density-voltage (J-V) characterization of the sample with Ag nanoparticles, which exhibits an improvement of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) in contrast to the samples without Ag nanoparticles. It was found that the properties of light-trapping of Ag nanoparticles have a prominent impact on improving the PCE of hybrid solar cells.

Directly Probing Light Absorption Enhancement of Single Hierarchical Structures with Engineered Surface Roughness

“…Therefore, similar to VO 2 , the α values of the patterned Si wire are also strongly dependent on the surface roughness and follows the same trend; higher α for rougher surfaces. This can be explained by the effect of enhanced light trapping in rougher wires when the amplitude of roughness is comparable to the light wavelength 23 – 27 . Also, the range of enhanced α for Si hierarchical structures correlates with the incident light wavelength.…”

Applications of Hybrid Metal‐Dielectric Nanostructures: State of the Art

“…When operating the structure as a TiO 2 solar cell after inserting a Ti layer between Au and TiO 2 , the photocurrent density was enhanced 3.4 times compared to a flat TiO 2 layer, taking values of 0.16 mA cm À2 (see Figure 19 bottom right). Apart from absorption enhancement, this result is also [267] Copyright 2017, American Chemical Society.…”

“…In refs. [266,267], the electrical and optical properties of hybrid silicon solar cells incorporating Si pyramids or nanowires, decorated with Ag NPs of radius R ¼ 10 nm, were investigated (see Figure 18 top left). In this work, the authors introduced the increased percentage of light absorption (M abs ), defined as…”

Fabricating Biomimetic Antireflective Coating Based on TiO2 Pyramids by Soft Lithography

“…For Example, Fan et al. modified Ag nanoparticles on the silicon pyramid to fabricate hybrid solar cells, significantly improving the photovoltaic conversion efficiency . Xiao et al.…”

“…[13,14] For Example, Fan et al modified Ag nanoparticles on the silicon pyramid to fabricate hybrid solar cells, significantly improving the photovoltaic conversion efficiency. [15] Xiao et al fabricated the biomimetic 3D heterojunction of RGO-MoS 2 and silicon pyramid by solution treatment, and the assembled photodetector showed excellent performance. [16] Li et al prepared a new surface enhanced Raman scattering substrate based on graphene oxide/silver nanoparticle/copper film covered silicon pyramid array.…”