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Theoretical study of light trapping in nanostructured thin film solar cells using wavelength-scale silver particles

Dabirian, A ; Sharif University of Technology | 2015

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b03719
  3. Publisher: American Chemical Society , 2015
  4. Abstract:
  5. We propose and theoretically evaluate a plasmonic light trapping solution for thin film photovoltaic devices that comprises a monolayer or a submonolayer of wavelength-scale silver particles. We systematically study the effect of silver particle size using full-wave electromagnetic simulations. We find that light trapping is significantly enhanced when wavelength-scale silver particles rather than the ones with subwavelength dimensions are used. We demonstrate that a densely packed monolayer of spherical 700 nm silver particles enhances integrated optical absorption under standard air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) in a 7 μm-thick N719-sensitized solar cell by 40% whereas enhancement is smaller than 2% when 100 nm ones are used. Superior performance of wavelength-scale silver particles is attributed to high-order whispering gallery modes that they support. These modes scatter the light over a wider angular range, hence increasing the density of both waveguide and resonance modes within the dye-sensitized layer
  6. Keywords:
  7. Thin film solar cell ; Dye-sensitized solar cells ; Electromagnetic wave absorption ; Light absorption ; Light scattering ; Monolayers ; Particle size ; Plasmons ; Solar cells ; Thin films ; Whispering gallery modes ; Full-wave electromagnetic simulation ; Integrated optical absorption ; Light-trapping ; Nanostructured thin film ; Sensitized solar cells ; Thin-film photovoltaic devices ; Silver
  8. Source: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces ; Volume 7, Issue 27 , July , 2015 , Pages 14926-14932 ; 19448244 (ISSN)
  9. URL: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.5b03719