Plasmonic Near-Field Absorbers for Ultrathin Solar Cells
Review article, 2012

If the active layer of efficient solar cells could be made 100 times thinner than in today's thin film devices, their economic competitiveness would greatly benefit. However, conventional solar cell materials do not have the optical capability to allow for such thickness reductions without a substantial loss of light absorption. To address this challenge, the use of plasmon resonances in metal nanostructures to trap light and create charge carriers in a nearby semiconductor material is an interesting opportunity. In this Perspective, recent progress with regards to ultrathin (similar to 10 nm) plasmonic nanocomposites is reviewed. Their optimal internal geometry for plasmon near-field induced absorption is discussed, and a zero thickness effective medium representation is used to optimize stacks including an Al back reflector for photovoltaics. This shows that high conversion efficiencies (>20%) are possible even when taking surface scattering effects and thin passivating layers inserted between the metal and semiconductor into account.

particle

enhancement

absorption

photovoltaics

optical-constants

atomic layer deposition

2d-photovoltaics

film

charge-carrier generation

nanoparticles

light

Author

Carl Hägglund

Stanford University

Peter Apell

Chalmers, Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Theory

Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters

1948-7185 (eISSN)

Vol. 3 10 1275-1285

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1021/jz300290d

More information

Latest update

7/21/2021