The current photovoltaic module market is dominated by silicon solar cells, whose development is limited by high costs of manufacturing processes. The search for easy low temperature fabrication techniques has spurred the development of solar cells based on organic semiconductor polymers. Recent studies have reported polymer based solar cells with comparable power conversion efficiencies to those of commercially available silicon solar cell modules. In the face of these advances, higher efficiencies are still desirable to better utilize the available solar energy for power generation. Organic semiconducting polymers have a high coefficient of absorption, but short carrier path lengths which necessitates the fabrication of thin layers for optimal power generation. The introduction of plasmonic effects in these organic solar cells leads to an increase in the optical path length of the incident light in the active layer, thereby increasing the short circuit current density. In this work, an organic solar cell is presented which contains metal-dielectric core-shell plasmonic nanoparticles. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) modelling has been used to simulate the models of light interaction with the organic solar cells containing different metal@dielectric nanoparticle composites. The different parameters of the nanoparticle composites in the organic solar cells were varied to the study the absorption enhancement in the active layer medium. The results, thus obtained for enhanced performance, were used for the chemical synthesis of the metal@dielectric nanoparticle composites and fabrication of organic solar cells with high power conversion efficiency.
KEYWORDS: Solar cells, Plasmonics, Absorption, Nanostructures, Finite-difference time-domain method, Thin film solar cells, Microcrystalline materials, Silicon solar cells, Surface plasmons
Due to the high cost of conventional crystalline silicon solar cells, researchers have been attracted towards the development of thin-film Si solar cells, where a several hundred nanometers thick amorphous Si (a-Si) or microcrystalline Si (μc-Si) solar cell layer is deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). This paper presents the use of plasmonic nanostructures in μc-Si p-i-n junction thin-film solar cells to increase the absorption in a broad spectral range. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation results demonstrate a broadband absorption enhancement in these solar cells due to plasmonic nanostructures. The enhancement in the absorption is attributed to the enhanced electromagnetic fields in the active layer due to the excitation of surface plasmon modes and photonic Bloch modes at multiple wavelengths. Moreover, the plasmonic nanostructures lead to a significant enhancement in the shortcircuit current density of the μc-Si thin-film solar cell.
We present Indium-rich InGaN thin-film solar cells containing plasmonic and dielectric nanostructures such as Ag and ITO nanopillars. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations were carried out for solar cells containing these nanostructures on the back side and on the front side of the solar cells, and an improvement in the performance of the solar cells was compared for the different geometries and sizes of these nanostructures. In order to develop highefficiency InGaN solar cells, the indium content in the InGaN active layer needs to be increased in order to cover the large solar spectral range. Recently, several reports have demonstrated the growth of single-crystalline Indium-rich InGaN alloys without phase separation by controlling the growth temperature and the pressure. Our FDTD simulation results demonstrate that the Ag nanostructures on the back side of the solar cell lead to an enhanced surface plasmonbased scattering mostly for longer wavelengths of light including band edge of active material, while the ITO nanostructures on the front side lead to enhanced scattering of a middle wavelength range from 450 nm to 700 nm. Hence, a combination of Ag and ITO nanostructures leads to a significant broadband absorption enhancement in the active-medium of the solar cells which in turn leads to a significant enhancement (~ 25 %) in the short circuit current density (Jsc) of these solar cells.
We present plasmonics-enhanced organic solar cells (OSCs) containing nanostructures of plasmonic metals in the hole transport layer extending to the active layer of the solar cell. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modeling was employed to simulate the interaction of incident light with the plasmonic nanostructures, leading to a broadband absorption enhancement in the OSCs. We studied the effect of employing nanostructures of different sizes and materials on the absorption enhancement in the OSCs. In some OSCs, we demonstrate 32% increase in the short circuit current density due to the presence of plasmonic nanostructures.
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