Performance enhancement of plasmonics silicon solar cells using Al2O3/In NPs/TiO2 antireflective surface coating

Engineered optical properties of silver-aluminum alloy nanoparticles embedded in SiON matrix for maximizing light confinement in plasmonic silicon solar cells

“…The light-NPs interaction at the nanoscale is very sensitive to the physical environment of NPs besides NPs’ size and shape. A capping layer can provide homogeneous dielectric environment around the NPs, which can enhance the alloy NPs’ near-field intensity by minimizing the SPRs dephasing losses 20 . The reflectance reduction in the entire polychromatic spectral region is due to the effective NPs’ near fields coupling with the sandwich structure instead of just the spacer layer, which is led by the broad angle light forward scattering in all wavelengths 4 , 19 .…”

“…The enhancement in photocurrent of the cell is due to the plasmonic effects from the NPs and antireflection effects from thin dielectric films. The better performance of PSSCs primarily by the alloy NPs’ near fields coupling via spacer/capping layers, and further light effective scattering into the silicon wafer 19 , 20 . However, the enhancement of η (39.0%) is larger than the enhancement of J sc (31.74%), which is due to the improvement in V oc (from 594.76 to 601.03 mV) and FF (from 69.40 to 72.44).…”

“…This approach can open up a broad range of applications in nanophotonics, biomedical, and also for energy harvesting 14 – 18 . For broad wavelength light forward scattering into a Si wafer and to avoid undesirable surface oxidation of the NPs, a dielectric matrix of lower refractive index medium than a Si was used for embedding the NPs (Si/spacer layer/metal NPs/capping layer) 4 , 19 , 20 . A thin dielectric spacer layer between the metal NPs and high index substrate can modulate the metal NP’s near-field incoupling into a substrate due to graded refractive index medium 19 , and also can help in reducing electronic trap states at the front surface of Si wafer to minimize the surface recombination 21 .…”

Enhancing Output Power of Textured Silicon Solar Cells by Embedding Indium Plasmonic Nanoparticles in Layers within Antireflective Coating

“…Indium nanoparticles (In NPs) exhibit plasmonic resonance in the ultraviolet range (below 280 nm) and broadband plasmonic light scattering from visible and near-infrared wavelengths [27,28,29], which makes them capable of boosting the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic devices. However, there has been relatively little research on the embedding of In NP sheets within a double-layer antireflective coating (DL-ARC) to enhance the photovoltaic performance of textured silicon solar cells [30,31,32,33].…”

“…The application of a double layer of In NPs enabled an impressive 53.42% improvement in output electrical power (compared to the cell without NPs) thanks to the effects of plasmonic forward scattering. The novelty of this study includes (a) the enhancement in output power and conversion efficiency of textured silicon solar cells by layering two-dimensional In NPs within a DL-ARC, and (b) a comprehensive study on the light-trapping performance of the textured silicon solar cells with and without layers of In NPs within the DL-ARC at angles from 0° to 75°, both of which are issues beyond the scope of previous studies [30,31,32,33].…”