Self-organized colloidal quantum dots and metal nanoparticles for plasmon-enhanced intermediate-band solar cells

Mendes, Manuel J.; Hernández, E.; López, E.; García‐Linares, Pablo; Ramiro, I.; Artacho, I.; Antolín, E.; Tobias, Irwin; Martı́, Antonio; Ĺuque, A.

doi:10.1088/0957-4484/24/34/345402

Cited by 59 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Even though the high parasitics are responsible for the poor performance of the silver nanoparticles, they should be less detrimental in a real solar cell configuration, because nanoparticles show a stronger scattering performance when coupled to a rear mirror [25,132,139].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, according to simple Mie theory the scattering efficiency of a single (spherical) nanoparticle scales with the square of its volume, whereas the absorption efficiency scales only linearly with the particle volume [139]. This argument therefore favours the assumption that the observed high absorption in the near-infrared is mainly due to the strong scattering of plasmonic nanoparticles.…”

Section: Absorption Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Schuster¹

2017

Springer Theses

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Thin-film silicon solar cells have the potential to convert sunlight into electricity at high efficiency, low cost and without generating pollutants. However, they need to become more competitive with conventional energy technologies by increasing their efficiency.One of the key efficiency limitations of using thin silicon absorber materials relates to the optical loss of low-energy photons, because the absorption coefficient of silicon decreases strongly for these low-energy photons in the red and nearinfrared, such that the absorption length becomes longer than the absorber layer thickness. If, in contrast, the incident light was redirected and trapped into the plane of the silicon slab, a thin-film could absorb as much light as a thick layer.Diffractive textures can not only efficiently scatter the low-energy photons, but are also able to suppress the reflection of the incident sunlight. In order to take advantage of the full benefits that textures can offer, I outline a simple layer transfer technique that allows the structuring of a thin-film independently from both sides, and use absorption measurements to show that structuring on both sides is favourable compared to structuring on one side only. I also introduce a figure-of-merit that can objectively and quantitatively assess the benefit of the structuring itself, which allows me to benchmark state-ofthe-art proposals and to deduce some important design rules. Minimising the parasitic losses, for example, is of critical importance, as the desired scattering properties are directly proportional to these losses. To study the impact of parasitics, I quantify the useful absorption enhancement of two different light trapping mechanisms, i.e. diffractive vs plasmonic, based on a fair and simple experimental comparison. The experiment demonstrates that diffractive light-trapping is a better choice for photovoltaic applications, because plasmonic structures accumulate the parasitical losses by multiple interactions with the trapped light.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Absorption Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Schuster¹

2017

Springer Theses

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“…In fact, the temperature is kept below 200 °C through the entire processing sequence [15]. After the deposition by PECVD of the first 20nm-thick amorphous layer, the samples are taken out of the vacuum chamber and the nanoparticles are deposited with wet-coating procedures described elsewhere [7,12]. Monolayer arrays of evenly-spaced particles on the a-Si surface are obtained.…”

Section: B Fabrication Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relative to SK self-assembled nanostructures, colloidal dots offer several advantages such as technological control of size and composition; highly monodisperse spherical geometries; tunability of photonic transition energies with dot size; ease of handling in dispersion; low temperature, large area, high throughput processing; wide range of candidate materials, etc. It is then natural to explore the potential of CQDs to fabricate IB solar cells [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to remedy this, the electric field enhancement provided by surface plasmon resonances in metal nanoparticles has been invoked, among other techniques [11,12], Noble metals (Au and Ag) are best suited to this purpose and nanometer-sized particles are available in colloidal dispersions, which opens the interesting perspective of incorporating both CQDs and metal nanoparticles (MNPs) via wet coating methods [7,13] to fabricate IB devices with plasmon-enhanced absorption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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HIT intermediate-band solar cells with self-assembled colloidal quantum dots and metal nanoparticles

Tobias

Mendes

Boronat

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE 42nd Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC)

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Abstract-. The particular opto-electronic properties of chemically synthesized colloidal nanoparticles can be promising for functional materials, as those required for high efficient photovoltaic (PV) devices. In particular, appropriately-designed semiconductor colloids (quantum dots, QDs) can potentially allow sub-bandgap current generation in intermediate-band solar cells; while metal nanoparticles (MNPs) sustaining surface plasmons can provide both near and far-field light trapping to further boost the generated power. However, the incorporation of colloidal particles in inorganic PV materials is not trivial, therefore their implementation has so far been restricted to organic/polymeric based solar cells. In this work, PbS colloidal QDs have been incorporated in the intrinsic a-Si:H layer of HIT (substrate/a-Si:H hetero-junction) test structures. Both c-Si and GaAs substrates have been used, and in some cases colloidal Au NPs have also been included. The obtained devices are meant as probes to verify the feasibility of incorporating foreign nanoparticles in a cell structure and not as potentially efficient solar cells. Despite the radical novelties incorporated, the devices behaved similarly to the references, thus proving the compatibility of the proposed materials and processes.

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Modified Absorption and Emission Properties Leading to Intriguing Applications in Plasmonic–Excitonic Nanostructures

Kumar

Nisika

Kumar

2020

Advanced Optical Materials

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years, great advances have been made to grow various shaped semiconductor nanocrystals (SNCs) like quantum dots, [7] nanowires, [8] nanorods (NR), [9] and other advanced shaped nanostructures, [10-12] with great precision. However, these semiconductor nanostructures have small extinction cross-sections (even smaller than geometric cross-section), leading to limited absorbance and emission quantum yields. This hinders the progress of semiconductor nanostructures in several areas ranging from clean energy production to various sensing applications. Among many promising solutions, integrating plasmonic nanoparticles (PNPs) with semiconductor nanostructures emerges as the most prominent way to alleviate aforementioned issue. The PNPs have greater extinction cross-section than SNCs (even greater than geometric cross-section), owing to light absorption and scattering by collective and coherent electron oscillations. [13,14] Moreover, these coherent oscillations can couple with electromagnetic wavelengths far greater than particle size, enabling them to guide light to subwavelength scales, thus overcoming diffraction limit. [15] Besides this, proper control over size and shape of plasmonic nanostructures enables engineering of their intrinsic properties to meet the criteria of required application. [16] For instance, by changing the aspect ratio (length to diameter ratio) of nanorods, one can cover wide spectral regions ranging from visible to near-infrared (NIR) regimes. [17] Thus, the integration of plasmonic and semiconductor nanostructures to obtain greater extinction cross-sections and modified properties in these hybrid nanostructures has received great attention from the research community over the past years. The properties of these hybrid nanostructures can be very different from the two nanoconstituents (metal and semiconductor nanostructures), owing to plasmon-exciton interactions. [18-20] Various configurations of metal/semiconductor nanostructures have been synthesized like metallic core/semiconductor shell, [21] semiconductor NR/metal nanoparticles (MNPs), [22] Janus metal/ semiconductor nanostructures, [23] and many others have been reported, [24-26] with varying absorption and emissive properties, targeting high performance applications. The energy transfer between metal-semiconductor nanostructures resulting from integration of PNPs and SNCs Hybrid nanostructures composed of metal and semiconducting nanocrystals have drawn tremendous attention owing to their extraordinary absorption and emission properties. The energy transfer in metal-semiconductor hybrids as a result of synergetic plasmon-exciton interactions leads to numerous applications in the field of solar energy harvesting, photocatalytic reactions, imaging, photonics, sensing, and many more. Various breakthroughs in advanced characterization techniques over the past decade have disclosed several factors affecting the energy transfer processes leading to modified absorption and emission properties in metal-semiconductor hybrids. Herein, various ...

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Self-organized colloidal quantum dots and metal nanoparticles for plasmon-enhanced intermediate-band solar cells

Cited by 59 publications

References 60 publications

Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Diffractive Optics for Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

HIT intermediate-band solar cells with self-assembled colloidal quantum dots and metal nanoparticles

Modified Absorption and Emission Properties Leading to Intriguing Applications in Plasmonic–Excitonic Nanostructures

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