Surface Plasmon Polariton-coupled Waveguide Back Reflector in Thin-film Silicon Solar Cell

Prabhathan, Patinharekandy; Murukeshan, Vadakke Matham

doi:10.1007/s11468-015-0045-9

Cited by 16 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Prabhathan and Murukeshan proposed a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waveguide coupled with back reflector. They employed an aluminum thin metal layer as SPP grating in the simulation and obtained optimized dimensions for the metal layer and the back-reflector distance that yielded maximum enhancements [365]. The maximum absorption enhancement of 153% is obtained for thin-film silicon solar cell with a silicon substrate thickness of 220 nm with 20 nm thickness of the SPP thin metal layer and at a 30 nm distance from back metal.…”

Section: Plasmonic Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-Reflective Coating Materials: A Holistic Review from PV Perspective

Natarajan

Pugazhendhi

Elavarasan³

et al. 2020

Energies

135

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The solar photovoltaic (PV) cell is a prominent energy harvesting device that reduces the strain in the conventional energy generation approach and endorses the prospectiveness of renewable energy. Thus, the exploration in this ever-green field is worth the effort. From the power conversion efficiency standpoint of view, PVs are consistently improving, and when analyzing the potential areas that can be advanced, more and more exciting challenges are encountered. One such crucial challenge is to increase the photon availability for PV conversion. This challenge is solved using two ways. First, by suppressing the reflection at the interface of the solar cell, and the other way is to enhance the optical pathlength inside the cell for adequate absorption of the photons. Our review addresses this challenge by emphasizing the various strategies that aid in trapping the light in the solar cells. These strategies include the usage of antireflection coatings (ARCs) and light-trapping structures. The primary focus of this study is to review the ARCs from a PV application perspective based on various materials, and it highlights the development of ARCs from more than the past three decades covering the structure, fabrication techniques, optical performance, features, and research potential of ARCs reported. More importantly, various ARCs researched with different classes of PV cells, and their impact on its efficiency is given a special attention. To enhance the optical pathlength, and thus the absorption in solar PV devices, an insight about the advanced light-trapping techniques that deals with the concept of plasmonics, spectral modification, and other prevailing innovative light-trapping structures approaching the Yablonovitch limit is discussed. An extensive collection of information is presented as tables under each core review section. Further, we take a step forward to brief the effects of ageing on ARCs and their influence on the device performance. Finally, we summarize the review of ARCs on the basis of structures, materials, optical performance, multifunctionality, stability, and cost-effectiveness along with a master table comparing the selected high-performance ARCs with perfect AR coatings. Also, from the discussed significant challenges faced by ARCs and future outlook; this work directs the researchers to identify the area of expertise where further research analysis is needed in near future.

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Section: Plasmonic Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-Reflective Coating Materials: A Holistic Review from PV Perspective

Natarajan

Pugazhendhi

Elavarasan³

et al. 2020

Energies

135

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“…Another strategy to intensify the absorption capability of an ultrathin semiconductor layer is the utilization of nanostructured back reflector. These metamirrors could be mainly obtained by nanoparticles or periodically patterned subwavelength units on optically thick reflector . In the case of nanoparticle‐based mirrors, the performance improvement is generally attributed to the scattering property of the plasmonic units.…”

Section: Light Trapping Schemesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, their contribution has been found to be weak, as explained in the previous section. The periodic pattern of nanostructures, such as gratings, patches, grooves, and holes, can significantly improve light absorption . In one of the pioneer studies, a group of researchers in Atwater lab designed a nanogroove based reflector, tiled to be polarization independent .…”

Section: Light Trapping Schemesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Ghobadi

Özbay

2019

Advanced Optical Materials

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throughput and large-scale compatibility. The photoactive material is generally composed of single or multiple semiconductor layers responsible for harvesting solar energy. This harvested solar irradiation can be used to generate electricity using photovoltaic (PV) devices, or it can be converted to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen which is the case for photoelectrochemical water splitting (PEC-WS). In both PV and PEC-WS applications, the ultimate goal is to establish an efficient photon capturing and electron collecting scheme to generate a huge number of photocarriers (including electron-hole pairs) with rational carrier dynamics (efficient charge generation, separation, and collection). This means that the device should be optically thick enough to generate high carrier's density and electrically thin enough to collect photogenerated carrier before they recombine. When light impinges a semiconductor surface, a part of the light is reflected back due to the mismatch between the air and the semiconductor layer refractive index. The rest will propagate within the bulk until it is fully absorbed by the semiconductor slab. The optical penetration depth (LPD) is defined as the depth at which the incident power falls to 1/e (≈37%) of its input value. This parameter differs from one semiconductor to another and it depends on the extinction coefficient (κ) of the In both photovoltaic (PV) and photoelectrochemical water splitting (PEC-WS) solar conversion devices, the ultimate aim is to design highly efficient, low cost, and large-scale compatible cells. To achieve this goal, the main step is the efficient coupling of light into active layer. This can be obtained in bulkysemiconductor-based designs where the active layer thickness is larger than light penetration depth. However, most low-bandgap semiconductors have a carrier diffusion length much smaller than the light penetration depth. Thus, photogenerated electron-hole pairs will recombine within the semiconductor bulk. Therefore, an efficient design should fully harvest light in dimensions in the order of the carriers' diffusion length to maximize their collection probability. For this aim, in recent years, many studies based on metasurfaces and metamaterials were conducted to obtain broadband and near-unity light absorption in subwavelength ultrathin semiconductor thicknesses. This review summarizes these strategies in five main categories: light trapping based on i) strong interference in planar multilayer cavities, ii) metal nanounits, iii) dielectric units, iv) designed semiconductor units, and v) trapping scaffolds. The review highlights recent studies in which an ultrathin active layer has been coupled to the above-mentioned trapping schemes to maximize the cell optical performance.

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“…Plasmonic core-shell particles are demonstrated in this regard [16,17]. Owing to the ambient extreme sensitivity and field enhancement, plasmonic structures have been used effectively for sucrose sensing [18] and light trapping [19,20]. Anisotropic metallic structures like gold nanostars and nanowires/rods have a relatively broad SPR spectrum over which the scattering properties could be efficiently used [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gold nano-urchins for plasmonic enhancement of random lasing in a dye-doped polymer

Gummaluri

Radhakrishnan

Vijayan

et al. 2020

J. Opt.

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We report our results on a plasmonic random laser with three-dimensional (3D) gold nanourchins as scatterers distributed in Rhodamine 6G dye doped polymer film. The performance of anisotropic urchin scatterers is first studied using electromagnetic simulations for absorption/scattering cross-section and local field enhancement. This is compared to gold nanoparticles of similar size. The simulation results indicate a two-fold local field enhancement, a higher scattering cross-section, and a low absorption cross-section in the 400 nm-570 nm spectral region of interest for nano-urchins. The effective scattering mean free path for urchins is calculated to be 90 µm less than nanoparticles. This suggests nano-urchins to be efficient scatterers over conventional nanospheres for random lasing. Random laser is then experimentally demonstrated using gold nano-urchin scatterers. Incoherent random lasing is observed for very low urchin number density of order ~10 8 cm -3 . A three-fold increase in scatterer concentration is shown to reduce the threshold energy from 0.8 mJ to 0.28 mJ per pulse. This is accompanied by a linewidth decrease from the rhodamine 6G emission bandwidth of 58 nm to up to 3 nm. The random feedback mechanism has been validated using a different spot pump scheme and angular measurement of emission. With low gold nanourchin concentration, being incoherent and in film form, this plasmonic random laser could be an economical solution for speckle-free imaging applications.

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Surface Plasmon Polariton-coupled Waveguide Back Reflector in Thin-film Silicon Solar Cell

Cited by 16 publications

References 29 publications

Anti-Reflective Coating Materials: A Holistic Review from PV Perspective

Anti-Reflective Coating Materials: A Holistic Review from PV Perspective

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

Gold nano-urchins for plasmonic enhancement of random lasing in a dye-doped polymer

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