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Silver nanodiscs for light scattering in thin epitaxial silicon solar cells: influence of the disc radius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2012

O. El Daif ,
L. Tong ,
B. Figeys ,
S. Jain ,
V. D. Miljkovic ,
V. Depauw ,
D. Vercruysse ,
K. Van Nieuwenhuysen ,
A. Dmitriev  and
P. Van Dorpe
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O. El Daif*
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
L. Tong
Affiliation:
Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg 41296 Sweden
B. Figeys
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
S. Jain
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
V. D. Miljkovic
Affiliation:
Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg 41296 Sweden
V. Depauw
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
D. Vercruysse
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
K. Van Nieuwenhuysen
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
A. Dmitriev
Affiliation:
Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg 41296 Sweden
P. Van Dorpe
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
I. Gordon
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
F. Dross
Affiliation:
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
*
*[email protected]
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Abstract

The effect of silver nanoparticles showing localised plasmonic resonances on the efficiency of thin film silicon solar cells is studied. Silver (Ag) nanodiscs were deposited on the surface of silicon cells grown on highly doped silicon substrates, through hole-mask colloidal lithography, which is a low-cost and bottom-up technique. The cells have no back reflector in order to exclusively study the effect of the front surface on their properties. Cells with nanoparticles were compared with both bare silicon cells and cells with an antireflection coating. We optically observe a resonance showing an absorption increase controllable by the disc radius. We also see an increase in efficiency with respect to bare cells, but we see a decrease in efficiency with respect to cells with an antireflection coating due to losses at wavelengths below the plasmon resonance. As the material properties are not notably affected by the particles deposition, the loss mechanism is an important absorption in the nanoparticles. We confirm this by numerical simulations.

Keywords

photovoltaicnanostructuredevices
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1391: Symposium J – Photonic and Plasmonic Materials for Enhanced Photovoltaic Performance , 2012 , mrsf11-1391-j07-29
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2012

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Footnotes

3

now at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

References

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