Abstract
In this work, in order to enhance the light absorption in one micron thick crystalline silicon solar cells, a back reflecting and rear located plasmonic nanodisk scheme is proposed. We investigate the scattering properties of aluminum nanostructures located at the back side and optimize them for enhancing absorption in the silicon layer by using finite difference time domain simulations. The results indicate that the period and diameters of nanodisks, thickness of spacer layer have a strong impact on short circuit current enhancements. The optimized Al nanoparticle arrays embedded in rear located SiO2 layer enhance J sc with an increase of 47% from the non-plasmonic case of 18.9 to 27.8 mA/cm2 when comparing with a typical stack with a planar aluminum back reflector and a back reflector with plasmonic nanoparticles. This finding could lead to improved light trapping within a thin silicon solar cell device.
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This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11347021 and 61404012).
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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices 2016.
Guest edited by Yuh-Renn Wu, Weida Hu, Slawomir Sujecki, Silvano Donati, Matthias Auf der Maur and Mohamed Swillam.
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Zhang, D., Kuang, Y., Hong, X. et al. Plasmon enhancement of optical absorption in ultra-thin film solar cells by rear located aluminum nanodisk arrays. Opt Quant Electron 49, 161 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-017-0930-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-017-0930-x