TY - JOUR

T1 - Modeling and Characterization of Antireflection Coatings with Embedded Silver Nanoparticles for Silicon Solar Cells

AU - Lesina, Antonino Calà

AU - Paternoster, Giovanni

AU - Mattedi, Francesca

AU - Ferrario, Lorenza

AU - Berini, Pierre

AU - Ramunno, Lora

AU - Paris, Alessio

AU - Vaccari, Alessandro

AU - Calliari, Lucia

N1 - Funding information: Alessio Paris recognizes financial support by Provincia Autonoma di Trento under Madelena project. We acknowledge IBM Canada Research and Development Centre, the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP), and SciNet (Compute Canada) for the technical support on the IBM Blue Gene/Q.

PY - 2015/5/15

Y1 - 2015/5/15

N2 - Plasmonics applied to solar cells is a widely investigated research field. Its main purpose is to include plasmonic structures in the cell design, in order to increase light trapping in the cell and, consequently, its energy conversion efficiency. Light scattering by plasmonic structures has been extensively studied by depositing metal nanoparticles on both sides of the cell, in order to enhance the transmission into the cell and/or the path length of the transmitted radiation. The effects due to the nanoparticles were studied also in the presence of dielectric layers covering the cell and working as anti-reflective coatings (ARC), although a complete discussion on the possible optimization of this setup is lacking. In this work, we provide a joint computational and experimental investigation of the optical properties of silver nanoparticles embedded in a SiO 2 ARC located on top of a crystalline silicon wafer. The effect of the particle size, particle position within the ARC layer, and surface coverage on the light transmitted to the silicon crystal are simulated by a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) in-house software. On the experimental side, a composite anti-reflective structure, made of a silica layer with embedded silver nanoparticles, is deposited on top of silicon wafers. Samples differing in the size and position of the embedded metal particles are produced. For each configuration, the total reflectance is optically measured by means of a photo spectrometer coupled to an integrating sphere. We provide direct comparison of experimental and simulation results, along with an exhaustive discussion about the transmission efficiency of the investigated systems. We also discuss how our analysis might be extended to different configurations and cell design.

AB - Plasmonics applied to solar cells is a widely investigated research field. Its main purpose is to include plasmonic structures in the cell design, in order to increase light trapping in the cell and, consequently, its energy conversion efficiency. Light scattering by plasmonic structures has been extensively studied by depositing metal nanoparticles on both sides of the cell, in order to enhance the transmission into the cell and/or the path length of the transmitted radiation. The effects due to the nanoparticles were studied also in the presence of dielectric layers covering the cell and working as anti-reflective coatings (ARC), although a complete discussion on the possible optimization of this setup is lacking. In this work, we provide a joint computational and experimental investigation of the optical properties of silver nanoparticles embedded in a SiO 2 ARC located on top of a crystalline silicon wafer. The effect of the particle size, particle position within the ARC layer, and surface coverage on the light transmitted to the silicon crystal are simulated by a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) in-house software. On the experimental side, a composite anti-reflective structure, made of a silica layer with embedded silver nanoparticles, is deposited on top of silicon wafers. Samples differing in the size and position of the embedded metal particles are produced. For each configuration, the total reflectance is optically measured by means of a photo spectrometer coupled to an integrating sphere. We provide direct comparison of experimental and simulation results, along with an exhaustive discussion about the transmission efficiency of the investigated systems. We also discuss how our analysis might be extended to different configurations and cell design.

KW - Anti-reflection coating

KW - Embedded Ag nanoparticles

KW - Plasmonic layer

KW - Si solar cells

KW - Solar cell broadband response

KW - State-of-the-art FDTD

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84947023440&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11468-015-9957-7

DO - 10.1007/s11468-015-9957-7

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84947023440

VL - 10

SP - 1525

EP - 1536

JO - PLASMONICS

JF - PLASMONICS

SN - 1557-1955

IS - 6

ER -