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Plasmonic silicon solar cells: impact of material quality and geometry

Celine Pahud, Olindo Isabella, Ali Naqavi, Franz-Josef Haug, Miro Zeman, Hans Peter Herzig, and Christophe Ballif

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

We study n-i-p amorphous silicon solar cells with light-scattering nanoparticles in the back reflector. In one configuration, the particles are fully embedded in the zinc oxide buffer layer; In a second configuration, the particles are placed between the buffer layer and the flat back electrode. We use stencil lithography to produce the same periodic arrangement of the particles and we use the same solar cell structure on top, thus establishing a fair comparison between a novel plasmonic concept and its more traditional counterpart. Both approaches show strong resonances around 700 nm in the external quantum efficiency the position and intensity of which vary strongly with the nanoparticle shape. Moreover, disagreement between simulations and our experimental results suggests that the dielectric data of bulk silver do not correctly represent the reality. A better fit is obtained by introducing a porous interfacial layer between the silver and zinc oxide. Without the interfacial layer, e.g. by improved processing of the nanoparticles, our simulations show that the nanoparticles concept could outperform traditional back reflectors.

© 2013 Optical Society of America

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Figures (6)
Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Modelling domain used for the HFSS optical simulation. (a) Nanoparticles reflector with nanoparticles embedded in ZnO. (b) Grating reflector with nanoparticles in contact with the silver (Ag) layer. The silver nanoparticles are modelled as circular discs (light grey). The reminder of the cell-stack is identical in both configurations.

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Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Simulated and experimental EQEs of n-i-p a-Si:H solar cells deposited on the nanoparticles (a) and on the grating (b) reflectors, assuming different silver datasets. Large and small symbols represent the experimental EQEs and the enhancements with respect to a flat reference, respectively.

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Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Real and imaginary parts of the permittivity tabulated for silver. The uppermost curve corresponds to the data of Palik with the addition of a Lorentzian resonance at 1.95 eV. Note the logarithmic scale to the right for the imaginary part.

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Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Simulated and experimental EQEs for the nanoparticles (a) and the grating (b) reflectors, assuming cylindric (dashed-dotted lines) and conic (full lines) nanoparticles. In both panels, the lower part shows the absorption in the particles.

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Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Change of the EQE due to deviation of nanoparticle shape from circular to oval in the simulation. Dashed-dotted, dashed and full lines represent eccentricities of 0, 0.3 and 0.4, and the thick line gives their average. Circles and squares denote again the nanoparticles and the grating reflector, respectively.

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Fig. 6
Fig. 6 SEM image cross section of a-Si:H solar cells deposited on the nanoparticles (a) and the grating reflectors (b). The silver nanoparticles in the nanoparticles reflector are composed of small silver grains due to their nucleation on the ZnO film while the silver grains can resume their growth in the grating reflector.

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Tables (1)

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Table 1 Short-circuit current densities for n-i-p cells on the nanoparticles and grating reflectors, using different dielectric data for the silver nanoparticles. Values in parentheses are obtained by suppressing the sharp resonances around 700 nm. The last line gives the experimental results [26].

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Equations (1)

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χ ( ω ) = A Ω 2 Ω 2 − ω 2 − i Γ ω
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