Self-assembled silver nanoparticles for plasmon-enhanced solar cell back reflectors: correlation between structural and optical properties

Morawiec, Seweryn; Mendes, Manuel J.; Mirabella, S.; Simone, F.; Priolo, F.; Crupi, I.

doi:10.1088/0957-4484/24/26/265601

Cited by 81 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…One viable and promising route is solid-state dewetting of ultra-thin films of metals 18,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and semiconductors, [42][43][44][45][46] a natural phenomenon exploited for the self-assembly of high-quality photonic structures. The instability giving rise to the dewetting phenomenon in thin films is mediated by the surface diffusion of atoms and occurs upon annealing at high temperature (even well below the melting point of the material) [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-assembled antireflection coatings for light trapping based on SiGe random metasurfaces

Bouabdellaoui

Checcucci

Wood

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Materials

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We demonstrate a simple self-assembly method based on solid state dewetting of ultra-thin silicon films and germanium deposition for the fabrication of efficient anti reflection coatings on silicon for light trapping. Via solid state dewetting of ultra-thin silicon on insulator and epitaxial deposition of Ge we fabricate SiGe islands with a high surface density, randomly positioned and broadly varied in size. This allows to reduce the reflectance to low values in a broad spectral range (from 500 nm to 2500 nm) and a broad angle (up to 55 degrees) and to trap within the wafer a large portion of the impinging light (∼40%) also below the band-gap, where the Si substrate is non-absorbing. Theoretical simulations agree with the experimental results showing that the efficient light coupling into the substrate mediated by Mie resonances formed within the SiGe islands. This lithography-free method can be implemented on arbitrarily thick or thin SiO2 layers and its duration only depends on the sample thickness and on the annealing temperature.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-assembled antireflection coatings for light trapping based on SiGe random metasurfaces

Bouabdellaoui

Checcucci

Wood

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Materials

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“…Mie theory is often intended to provide a first-order estimation of the nanoparticle's performances [134]. While the theory predicts a low parasitic absorption for our particle sizes involved (170 nm ± 90 nm), the scattered light can come back to the plasmonic particles and be scattered or absorbed again, and again.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My key argument for spectrally constant fitting parameters is that Mie theory clearly shows that the plasmonic response is flat below 2 eV for particles >100 nm. In fact, Morawiec and Tan et al [24,134] experimentally verified that the resonance is very broad, and almost flat, in the corresponding wavelength range (600-1000 nm).…”

Section: Extraction Of the Parasitic Influencesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…On the one hand, previous studies suggest that for the metal particle sizes involved (170 nm ± 90 nm) the parasitic absorption becomes minimal in the long wavelength regime [132,134]. In fact, according to simple Mie theory the scattering efficiency of a single (spherical) nanoparticle scales with the square of its volume, whereas the absorption efficiency scales only linearly with the particle volume [139].…”

Section: Absorption Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The plasmonic design consists of self-assembled silver nanoparticles in direct contact with the high-index a-Si layer, an approach that has previously shown strong efficiency enhancements of almost 30% [25,134].…”

Section: The Plasmonic Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Schuster¹

2017

Springer Theses

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Thin-film silicon solar cells have the potential to convert sunlight into electricity at high efficiency, low cost and without generating pollutants. However, they need to become more competitive with conventional energy technologies by increasing their efficiency.One of the key efficiency limitations of using thin silicon absorber materials relates to the optical loss of low-energy photons, because the absorption coefficient of silicon decreases strongly for these low-energy photons in the red and nearinfrared, such that the absorption length becomes longer than the absorber layer thickness. If, in contrast, the incident light was redirected and trapped into the plane of the silicon slab, a thin-film could absorb as much light as a thick layer.Diffractive textures can not only efficiently scatter the low-energy photons, but are also able to suppress the reflection of the incident sunlight. In order to take advantage of the full benefits that textures can offer, I outline a simple layer transfer technique that allows the structuring of a thin-film independently from both sides, and use absorption measurements to show that structuring on both sides is favourable compared to structuring on one side only. I also introduce a figure-of-merit that can objectively and quantitatively assess the benefit of the structuring itself, which allows me to benchmark state-ofthe-art proposals and to deduce some important design rules. Minimising the parasitic losses, for example, is of critical importance, as the desired scattering properties are directly proportional to these losses. To study the impact of parasitics, I quantify the useful absorption enhancement of two different light trapping mechanisms, i.e. diffractive vs plasmonic, based on a fair and simple experimental comparison. The experiment demonstrates that diffractive light-trapping is a better choice for photovoltaic applications, because plasmonic structures accumulate the parasitical losses by multiple interactions with the trapped light.

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Nanoporous Silver Thin Films: Multifunctional Platforms for Influencing Chain Morphology and Optical Properties of Conjugated Polymers

Shen

O’Carroll

2015

Adv Funct Materials

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wileyonlinelibrary.comthe infl uence of nanoscale confi nement on conjugated polymer chain alignment were carried out on nanoimprinted conjugated polymer fi lms [ 4 ] and on conjugated polymer fi bers formed within nanoporous dielectric templates. [ 12,13 ] In these studies, induced polymer chain alignment was observed and occurred in the direction normal to the confi nement direction due to the fl ow of the polymer chains and the interaction between the polymer and the substrate/sidewall. [ 4 ] Additionally, since conjugated polymerbased thin-fi lm optoelectronics have lower device effi ciencies compared with inorganic devices, [ 14 ] various optically-active nanostructures have been employed to manipulate light in thin conjugated polymer fi lms due to the unique optical properties of nanostructures. Examples include: 1) patterned nonmetallic transparent substrates (patterned on either the outer surface [ 15 ] or inner surface [ 16 ] of the device), whereby the scattering properties of the patterned substrates were employed to improve light extraction effi ciency from the light-emitting organic active layer; 2) addition of plasmonic nanostructures to take advantage of their light scattering and optical near-fi eld properties. [ 17 ] Plasmonic nanostructures employed were either metallic nanoparticles/nanowires embedded into the devices' active layer and/or hole/electron transport layer, [ 18,19 ] or nanostructure arrays introduced onto the metallic electrodes. [ 20 ] In particular, nanohole arrays in metallic thin fi lms have been used as both back electrodes [ 21 ] as well as front electrodes, [ 22,23 ] and showed improvements in light in-coupling or out-coupling, depending on the optoelectronic application. Most of the previous studies employing nanohole arrays were carried out on periodic arrays fabricated by nanoimprint lithography, [ 22 ] e-beam lithography [ 24 ] or focused-ion beam milling, [ 25 ] since the periodicity of the nanohole array played an important role in their plasmonic properties. [ 26 ] However, random nanoporous metal has also shown promising plasmonic and photonic properties, [27][28][29][30] and can be fabricated by large-area nonlithographic methods, such as dealloying. [ 31 ] Here, we develop a nonlithographic, thermally-assisted dewetting method to fabricate nanoporous silver (NPAg) fi lms with different morphologies over areas >1 cm 2 . We study the infl uence of NPAg on both the chain morphology Disordered nanoporous silver (NPAg) thin fi lms fabricated by a thermally assisted dewetting method are employed as a platform to infl uence chain alignment, morphology, and optical properties of three well-known conjugated polymers. Grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) measurements show that the porous structure of the metal induces close π-π stacking of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) chains and extended, planar chain conformations of poly(9,9-di-n -octylfl uorenyl-2,7-diyl) (PFO) and poly[(9,9-di-n -octylfl uorenyl-2,7-diyl)-alt -(benzo[2,1,3]thiadiazol-4,8-diyl)] (F8BT)...

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Self-assembled silver nanoparticles for plasmon-enhanced solar cell back reflectors: correlation between structural and optical properties

Cited by 81 publications

References 34 publications

Self-assembled antireflection coatings for light trapping based on SiGe random metasurfaces

Self-assembled antireflection coatings for light trapping based on SiGe random metasurfaces

Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Nanoporous Silver Thin Films: Multifunctional Platforms for Influencing Chain Morphology and Optical Properties of Conjugated Polymers

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