Surface plasmon enhanced silicon solar cells

Pillai, Supriya; Catchpole, Kylie; Trupke, Thorsten; Green, Martin A.

doi:10.1063/1.2734885

Cited by 1,748 publications

(1,179 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Recently, the use of metallic nanostructures has proven extremely effective in enhancing the efficiency of thin film solar cells whose performance is constrained by similar issues [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] . Metallic nanoparticles support collective electron oscillations, known as surface plasmons (SPs).…”

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confidence: 99%

Plasmon Enhanced Solar-to-Fuel Energy Conversion

Thomann¹,

et al. 2011

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Future generations of photoelectrodes for solar fuel generation must employ inexpensive, earth-abundant absorber materials in order to provide a large-scale source of clean energy. These materials tend to have poor electrical transport properties and exhibit carrier diffusion lengths which are significantly shorter than the absorption depth of light. As a result, many photo-excited carriers are generated too far from a reactive surface, and recombine instead of participating in solar-tofuel-conversion. We demonstrate that plasmonic resonances in metallic nanostructures and multi-layer interference effects can be engineered to strongly concentrate sunlight close to the electrode/liquid interface, precisely where the relevant reactions take place. By comparing spectral features in the enhanced photocurrent spectra to full-field electromagnetic simulations, the contribution of surface plasmon excitations is verified. These results open the door to the optimization of a wide variety of photochemical processes by leveraging the rapid advances in the field of plasmonics.Solar fuel generation based on inexpensive, earth-abundant materials constitutes one potentially viable option to satisfy the demand for a terawatt scale renewable source of energy that can be stored and used on demand 1 . The efficiency of solar water splitting 2, 3 based on earth-abundant materials made using scalable processing techniques has remained low despite intensive research efforts since the 1970s. One of the underlying reasons for the observed inefficiency is that many of these materials exhibit a large mismatch between the length scales over which photon absorption takes place (up to micrometers), and the relatively short distances over which electronic carriers can be extracted (often limited to a few 10's of nanometers). One possible approach to circumvent this challenge is to synthesize nanostructured electrodes in which the photon propagation and charge transport directions are orthogonalized. This type of geometry can be accomplished in wire arrays [4][5][6] or other nanostructures with large surface-tovolume ratios 7 . We pursue a new approach that is aimed at the use of metallic

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confidence: 99%

Plasmon Enhanced Solar-to-Fuel Energy Conversion

Thomann¹,

et al. 2011

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“…Among the various technological applications, the examples in the fields of photovoltaics [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], pollutant-degradation materials [20], metamaterials [21], gas sensors [22,23] and those of surface-enhanced raman spectroscopy [24] are of particular importance, associated with several other types of possibilities within optical and sensor devices [25][26][27][28]. Moreover, the interactions of noble metal clusters, dispersed in a dielectric matrix, with biological agents may result in changes of the…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microstructural evolution of Au/TiO2 nanocomposite films: The influence of Au concentration and thermal annealing

et al. 2015

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Nanocomposite thin films consisting of a dielectric matrix, such as titanium oxide (TiO 2 ), with embedded gold (Au) nanoparticles were prepared and will be analysed and discussed in detail in the present work. The evolution of morphological and structural features was studied for a wide range of Au concentrations and for annealing treatments in air, for temperatures ranging from 200 to 800 ºC. Major findings revealed that for low Au atomic concentrations (at. %), there are only traces of clustering, and just for relatively high annealing temperatures, T ≥ 500 ºC. Furthermore, the number of Au nanoparticles is extremely low, even for the highest annealing temperature, T = 800 ºC.It is noteworthy that the TiO 2 matrix also crystallizes in the anatase phase for annealing temperatures above 300 ºC.

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“…1,2 LSP's allow tuning of the optical properties of patterned nanoscopic objects within the visible wavelength range, thus opening novel possibilities for optoelectronics, 3 solar cells, 4 or biological analysis. 5 The resonant profile of plasmonic nanostructures is usually investigated in the far field with common spectrometers, and only the in-plane properties are addressed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the out-of-plane optical response of plasmonic nanostructures using spectroscopic ellipsometry

Verre¹,

Fleischer²,

Smith³

et al. 2011

Phys. Rev. B

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A simplified approach to investigate the out-of-plane response of plasmonic nanostructures using spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) is presented. One-dimensional self-assembled arrays of Ag nanoparticles (NP's) were grown on stepped Al 2 O 3 (0001), in ultrahigh vacuum, using deposition at a glancing angle. The SE response was measured with the plane of incidence aligned along, and across, the surface steps. From the raw data, an anisotropic surface excess function (ASEF) can be extracted, whose properties depend only on the dielectric function of the NP layer. Three resonances are clearly seen in the ASEF: two in-plane resonances, which correspond to the resonances measured using normal incidence reflection anisotropy spectroscopy, and the out-of-plane resonance. A dipole model is used to simulate the optical response of the NP layer, where the presence of the out-of-plane resonance provides an important additional constraint in developing the model.

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Surface plasmon enhanced silicon solar cells

Cited by 1,748 publications

References 31 publications

Plasmon Enhanced Solar-to-Fuel Energy Conversion

Plasmon Enhanced Solar-to-Fuel Energy Conversion

Microstructural evolution of Au/TiO2 nanocomposite films: The influence of Au concentration and thermal annealing

Probing the out-of-plane optical response of plasmonic nanostructures using spectroscopic ellipsometry

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