Design and optimization of Ag-dielectric core-shell nanostructures for silicon solar cells

Abstract

Metal-dielectric core-shell nanostructures have been proposed as a light trapping scheme for enhancing the optical absorption of silicon solar cells. As a potential application of such enhanced effects, the scattering efficiencies of three core-shell structures (Ag@SiO2, Ag@TiO2, and Ag@ZrO2) are discussed using the Mie Scattering theory. For compatibility with experiment results, the core diameter and shell thickness are limited to 100 and 30 nm, respectively, and a weighted scattering efficiency is introduced to evaluate the scattering abilities of different nanoparticles under the solar spectrum AM 1.5. The simulated results indicate that the shell material and thickness are two key parameters affecting the weighted scattering efficiency. The SiO2 is found to be an unsuitable shell medium because of its low refractive index. However, using the high refractive index mediumTiO2 in Ag@TiO2 nanoparticles, only the thicker shell (30 nm) is more beneficial for light scattering. The ZrO2 is an intermediate refractive index material, so Ag@ZrO2 nanoparticles are the most effective core-shell nanostructures in these silicon solar cells applications.

Localized surface plasmon resonance for improving optical absorption in core-shell Ag@TiO2 nanoparticles

“…4a), which is due to the influence of Ag NPs [17]. Moreover, based on the analysis of plasmonic hybridization model, which is analogous to the molecular orbital theory [20,21], the LSPR position of the core-shell structure also depends upon the shell thickness [22]. The LSPR hybridization in core-shell NPs can be described by the interaction between the inner and outer shell resonances.…”

Numerical Study of Novel Ratiometric Sensors Based on Plasmon–Exciton Coupling

“…Generalized Mie's theory is thus an operational way to compute optical cross-sections of nanoparticle with core-shell structure, 8,9,[11][12][13]20,21 capturing special phenomena related to LSPR, such as strong coupling 14,15,22 and Spasers. 23,24 The cross-section calculations using our implementation of Sinzig and Quinten formalism agreed well with these reports.…”

“…10 In this paper, we introduce a novel ratiometric core-shell sensor based on strong coupling between shell LSP and emitter exciton, allowing to quantify a local refractive change in the surrounding of the sensor through the intensity ratio of two extinction peaks. We used Mie's theory which has been demonstrated to be an effective method to model the optical properties of spherical core-shell nanoparticles [11][12][13] and the strong coupling between plasmons and excitons. [14][15][16] We numerically studied the scattering, absorption, and extinction spectra of an emitter core with a silver shell (emitter@silver core-shell) nanostructure.…”

Periodic molybdenum disc array for light trapping in amorphous silicon layer

“…[15][16][17][18] Metals with relative low melting points have been wildly studied and applied in photovoltaic devices, such as gold, silver and aluminum. [19][20][21][22] But those metals are not robust enough in harsh preparation processes such as high temperature and PECVD growth of a-Si:H. This may introduce impurity into a-Si:H layers and lead to higher carrier recombination in the photovoltaic or solar thermal devices. 23,24 Briefly, the primary issue of amorphous silicon applied in PETE or photovoltaic is enhancing the light absorption efficiency of amorphous silicon thin film and reducing the possibilities of unwanted impurity, and therefore microstructures of refractory metal may overcome these problems.…”