Nanoparticle-coated n-ZnO/p-Si photodiodes with improved photoresponsivities and acceptance angles for potential solar cell applications

Abstract

In this work, n-ZnO/p-Si photodiodes were fabricated and characterized to explore their potential applications in solar cells. With a coating of silica nanoparticles, we observed the enhancement of photoresponsivity and acceptance angle at a wavelength between 400 and 650 nm. The 17.6% increase of the photoresponsivity over the conventional device is due to the improved optical transmission toward the semiconductor through the silica nanoparticles. Furthermore, the acceptance angle of the nanoparticle coated device is dramatically increased, which is attributed to the effect of Bragg diffraction.

Effect of growth temperature on the structure and optical properties of ZnO nanorod arrays grown on ITO substrate

“…Recently, more and more attention has been paid to the preparation of ZnO nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanorods, nanotubes, nanosheets, nanoflowers, and nanosprings [3][4][5][6][7]. Among those structures, ZnO nanorods or nanowires with highly oriented and ordered arrays in particular have drawn much attention for the development of novel nanodevices such as sensors, solar cells and UV lasers [8][9][10][11][12].…”

Multi-Objective Optimization of Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells with Metallic and Dielectric Nanoparticles

“…Since the first work exploiting such an option [12], many papers have investigated thin-film solar cells enhanced by means of scattering from gold [13,14] and silver [15,16] nanoparticles. Similar improvements can also be obtained with dielectric nanoparticles [17,18]. In [19], it is shown that the placement of both metallic and dielectric nanoparticles is more advantageous than using only one type of nanoparticle.…”

Efficiently Harvesting Sun Light for Silicon Solar Cells through Advanced Optical Couplers and A Radial p-n Junction Structure

“…Besides metallic nanoparticles, it has been proven theoretically that dielectric nanoparticles with high permittivity and low dissipation level can significantly enhance photoelectron generation and hence, result in better performance of thin-film SCs [53]. Chen et al [54] demonstrated the photoresponsitivity and acceptance angle of n-ZnO/p-Si photodiodes could be enhanced by coating silica nanoparticles on the top surface of photodiodes. Their result provides a potential application in SCs.…”