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Modeling and Characterization of Antireflection Coatings with Embedded Silver Nanoparticles for Silicon Solar Cells

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Abstract

Plasmonics applied to solar cells is a widely investigated research field. Its main purpose is to include plasmonic structures in the cell design, in order to increase light trapping in the cell and, consequently, its energy conversion efficiency. Light scattering by plasmonic structures has been extensively studied by depositing metal nanoparticles on both sides of the cell, in order to enhance the transmission into the cell and/or the path length of the transmitted radiation. The effects due to the nanoparticles were studied also in the presence of dielectric layers covering the cell and working as anti-reflective coatings (ARC), although a complete discussion on the possible optimization of this setup is lacking. In this work, we provide a joint computational and experimental investigation of the optical properties of silver nanoparticles embedded in a SiO 2 ARC located on top of a crystalline silicon wafer. The effect of the particle size, particle position within the ARC layer, and surface coverage on the light transmitted to the silicon crystal are simulated by a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) in-house software. On the experimental side, a composite anti-reflective structure, made of a silica layer with embedded silver nanoparticles, is deposited on top of silicon wafers. Samples differing in the size and position of the embedded metal particles are produced. For each configuration, the total reflectance is optically measured by means of a photo spectrometer coupled to an integrating sphere. We provide direct comparison of experimental and simulation results, along with an exhaustive discussion about the transmission efficiency of the investigated systems. We also discuss how our analysis might be extended to different configurations and cell design.

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Acknowledgments

Alessio Paris recognizes financial support by Provincia Autonoma di Trento under Madelena project. We acknowledge IBM Canada Research and Development Centre, the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP), and SciNet (Compute Canada) for the technical support on the IBM Blue Gene/Q.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Antonino Calà Lesina, Pierre Berini & Lora Ramunno

  2. Centre for Research in Photonics, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Antonino Calà Lesina, Pierre Berini & Lora Ramunno

  3. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Pierre Berini

  4. Micro-Nano fabrication and characterization Facility–MNF, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123, Trento, Italy

    Giovanni Paternoster, Francesca Mattedi & Lorenza Ferrario

  5. Applied Research on Energy Systems, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123, Trento, Italy

    Alessio Paris & Alessandro Vaccari

  6. European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*), Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123, Trento, Italy

    Lucia Calliari

Authors
  1. Antonino Calà Lesina
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  2. Giovanni Paternoster
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  3. Francesca Mattedi
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  4. Lorenza Ferrario
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  5. Pierre Berini
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  6. Lora Ramunno
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  7. Alessio Paris
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  8. Alessandro Vaccari
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  9. Lucia Calliari
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Correspondence to Alessio Paris.

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Lesina, A.C., Paternoster, G., Mattedi, F. et al. Modeling and Characterization of Antireflection Coatings with Embedded Silver Nanoparticles for Silicon Solar Cells. Plasmonics 10, 1525–1536 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-9957-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-9957-7

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