Metal nanoparticles in a photovoltaic cell: Effect of metallic loss

Abstract

We examined numerically the contribution of contrasting characteristics of metal nanoparticles, strong polarization and metallic loss, to the total efficiency of photovoltaic cells. A layer of nanoparticle array was chosen as a model. We found that depending on the location of the layer in the cell, the metallic loss offsets the enhanced photoabsorption due to the strong near field. A general procedure to reduce a nanoparticle layer into a sheet of effective continuous medium is presented, which greatly facilitates the quantitative analysis

Photocurrent Enhancement of HgTe Quantum Dot Photodiodes by Plasmonic Gold Nanorod Structures

“…For the devices with Au nanorods positioned at the QD/ZnO interface (Figure (c)), the average J sc is 0.35 mA/cm 2 , a little lower than that of the control devices. This observation is consistent with previous studies ,, and is likely due to exciton quenching and trap-assisted charge recombination at the Au nanorod surface. This argument is further supported with the transient photovoltage measurement of the photodiodes (Figure S2 in the Supporting Information), where the QD/Au nanorod/ZnO structure exhibits much faster transient photovoltage decay than the other device structures.…”

“…Early studies showed that directly blending metal NPs into the photoactive layer of a device leads to little or no photocurrent improvement even though the plasmon-enhanced optical absorption is significant. This is mainly due to exciton quenching and trap-assisted charge recombination at the surface of the metal NPs. ,, Recent research demonstrated alternative approaches such as doping Au-TiO 2 core–shell nanoparticles into the porous TiO 2 layer of dye-sensitized solar cells , and embedding self-assembled Au nanopyramid arrays into the poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) buffer layer of organic solar cells . These studies achieved up to 50% increment of the short-circuit current density ( J sc ) thanks to the surface passivation and good dispersion of the Au NPs in the buffer layers.…”

Mapping the morphological changes of deposited gold nanoparticles across an imprinted groove

“…Polymer-metal nanocomposites and interfaces play an important role in many areas of technology and research (Walter, 2006;Akamatsu & Deki, 1997;Kharkwal et al, 2011). This includes, for example, devices for sensing applications (Bauer et al, 2003), catalysis (Lee et al, 2013;Sugunan et al, 2010;Li et al, 2012), organic electronics (Mentovich et al, 2010;Watanabe & Miyano, 2011), plasmonics (Babonneau et al, 2011(Babonneau et al, , 2012, organic photovoltaics (Perlich et al, 2009) and future storage technology (Martinez-Tong et al, 2013). It is well known that many of these devices rely on metal nanoparticles owing to their size-dependent and adjustable physical and chemical properties (Yeh et al, 2012;Jin, 2010;Kim et al, 2009;Xu et al, 2010;Zheng et al, 2012;Romo-Herrera et al, 2011;Wu et al, 2010).…”

Desarrollo de estructuras nanofotonicas de campo cercano para intensificacion localizada de luz en celulas solares de banda intermedia - Near-field nanophotonic structures for localized light enhancement in intermediate band solar cells

“…and experimentally observed that in these configurations the effect of the MNPs is similar to that of an anti-reflection coating (ARC) or a rear mirror layer. So, a better choice is just to use such conventional layers instead of the MNPs, since the MNPs always exhibit more dissipation (light absorption) at energies away from their plasmonic frequency [90,91]. In other words, the easiness of the application of MNPs on the top or bottom surface of the cell does not make a case for their use in this configuration.…”