Abstract
Surface modification to improve light trapping properties is one of the choices that can be used to improve the efficiency of silicon (Si)-based solar cells. In this work, a simple combined treatment is used to modify Si surfaces to improve their overall light trapping properties. Silver (Ag) nanoparticles were deposited on porous-Si micro-pyramid structures to investigate the effects of combining the three mechanisms on light trapping properties of the treated-Si surfaces. The surface modifications were introduced for a simple large-scale chemical treatment of the Si surfaces. It was found that the etching current is a limiting factor that controls the size of the etched nanopores. The size of the deposited-Ag nanoparticle depends on both the nanopore sizes of the porous pyramids and on the AgNO3 dipping time. The average Ag particle size increased from 20.5 nm, for samples with smaller nanopores etched with 10 mA/cm2 current, to 24.0 nm for samples with larger nanopores etched with 20 mA/cm2 current. From scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and as verified by X-ray diffraction (XRD), the average Ag particle size increased from 48.25 nm to about 64.09 nm as the AgNO3 dipping time increased from 10 to 40 min. The reflectivity measurements showed a considerable 98.44% reduction in the average reflectance of the treated samples in the wavelength range of 400–840 nm. It is believed that the Ag nanoparticles’ plasmonic behavior and the nanoporous pyramid patterns are responsible for this substantial reflectivity reduction which leads to an increased efficiency of light trapping of the treated-Si samples.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Al-Husseini AM (2016) Influence of the current density on morphology of electrochemically formed porous silicon. Jordan J Phys 9:47–54
Al-Husseini AM, Lahlouh B (2017) Silicon pyramid structure as a reflectivity reductioin mechanism. J Appl Sci 17:374–383. https://doi.org/10.3923/jas.2017.374.383
Alwan AM, Yousfi AM, Wali LA (2017) The growth of the silver nanoparticles on mesoporous silicon and microporous silicon: a comparative study. Indian J Pure Appl Phys 55:813–820
Anigol LB, Charantimath JS, Gurubasavaraj PM (2017) Effect of concentration and pH on the size of silver nanoparticles synthesized by green chemistry. Org Med Chem. https://doi.org/10.19080/omcij.2017.03.555622(555622)
Branz HM, Yost VE, Ward S, Jones KM, To B, Stradins P (2009) Nanostructured black silicon and optical reflectance of graded-density surfaces. Appl Phys Lett 94:231121. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3152244
Cao DT, Ngan LTQ, Viet TV (2013) Effect of AgNO3 concentation on structure aligned silicon nanowire arrays fabricated via silver-assisted chemical etching. Int J Nanotechnol 10:343–350. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijnt.2013.053147
Chowdhury S, Basu A, Kundu S (2014) Green synthesis of protein capped silver nanoparticles from phytopathogenic fungus Macrophomina phaeolina (Tassi) Goid with antimicrobial properties against multidrug-resistant bacteria. Nanoscale Res Lett 9:365. https://doi.org/10.1186/1556-276X-9-365
Dai H, Li M, Li Y, Hang Y, Bai F, Ren X (2012) Effective light trapping enhancement by plasmonic Ag nanoparticles on silicon pyramid surface. Opt Express 20:A502–A509. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.20.00A502
Dzhafarov TD, Aslanov SS, Ragimov SH, Sadigov MS, Nabiyeva AF, Aydin-Yuksel S (2012) Performance improvement of silicon solar cells by nanoporous silicon coating. Tekhnol Konstr Eletronnoi Appar 2:42–46
González AL, Noguez C, Beránek J, Barnard AS (2014) Size, shape, stability, and color of plasmonic silver nanoparticles. J Phys Chem C 118:9128–9136. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp5018168
Harraz FA, Faisal M, Al-Salami AE, El-Toni AM, Almadiy AA, Al-Sayari SA, Al-Assiri MS (2019) Silver nanoparticles decorated stain-etched mesoporous silicon for sensitive, selective detection of ascorbic acid. Mater Lett 234:96–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2018.09.076
Hayder-Adawyia J, Alwan-Alan M, Jabbar-Allaa A (2016) Optimizing of porous silicon morphology for synthesis of silver nanoparticles. Microporous Mesoporous Mater 227:152–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2016.02.035
Karthik I, Kumar G, Vishnu-Kirthi A, Rahuman AA, Bhaskara Rao KV (2013) Streptomyces sp. LK3 mediated synthesis of silver nanoparticles and its biomedical applications. Bioprocess Biosys Eng 25:25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-013-0994-3
Koynov S, Brandt MS, Stutzmann M (2006) Black nonreflecting silicon surfaces for solar cells. Appl Phys Lett 88:203107. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2204573
Kumar P, Lemmens P, Ghosh M, Ludwig F, Schilling M (2009) Effect of HF concentation on physical and electronic properties of electrochemically formed nanoporous silicon. J Nanomater. https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/728957(728957)
Lahlouh BI, Ikhmayies SJ, Juwhari HK (2018) Structural, optical, and vibrational properties of ZnO microrods deposited on silicon substrate. J Electron Mater 47:4455–4462. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-018-6178-9
Liu Y, Lai T, Li H, Wang Y, Mei Z, Liang H, Li Z, Zhang F, Wang W, Kuznetsov AY, Du X (2012) Nanostructure formation and passivation of large-area black silicon for solar cell applications. small 8:1392–1397. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201101792
Liu K, Shengchun Q, Zhang X, Tan F, Wang Z (2013) Improved photovoltaic performance of silicon nanowire/organic hybrid solar cells by incorporating silver nanoparticles. Nanoscale Res Lett 8:88. https://doi.org/10.1186/1556-276X-8-88
Liu X, Coxon PR, Peters M, Hoex B, Cole JM, Fray DJ (2014) Black silicon: fabrication methods, properties and solar energy applications. Energy Environ Sci 7:3223–3263. https://doi.org/10.1039/C4EE01152J
Liu Y, Zi W, Liu S, Yan B (2015) Effective light trapping by hybrid nanostructures for crystalline silicon solar cells. Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 140:180–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2015.04.019
Liu Y, Das A, Lin Z, Cooper LB, Rohatgi A, Wong CP (2017) Hierarchical robust textured structures for large scale self-cleaning black silicon solar cells. Nano Energy 3:127–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2013.11.002
Marthi SR, Sekhri S, Ravindra NM (2015) Optical properties of black silicon: an analysis. JOM 67:2154–2159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-015-1527-0
Panarin AY, Girel KV, Bandarenka HV, Khodasevich IA, Bondarenko VP, Terekhov SN (2015) Formation of silver nanostructures on porous silicon and review of their applications. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on modern applications of nanotechnology, Minsk, Belarus. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10812-009-9175-1
Parida B, Choi J, Palei S, Kim K (2015) Nanotextured Si solar cells on microstructured pyramidal surfaces by silver-assisted chemical etching process. Trans Electr Electron Mater 16:212–220. https://doi.org/10.4313/TEEM.2015.16.4.212
Prakash V, Pawar J, Patel AK, Henry R, Patwardhan A (2017) Analysis of nucleation and growth parameter of silver nanoparticles for sensors: In: IEEE (2017) https://doi.org/10.1109/iementech.2017.8076939
RENEWABLES (2018), Global status report, REN21
Stepanov AL, Valeev VI, Vorobev VV, Osin YN (2018) Ag+-ion implantation of silicon. Phosphorus, sulfur, and silicon 193:110–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/10426507.2017.1417307
Tang Q, Shen H, Yao H, Gao K, Jiang Y, Zheng C, Yang W, Li Y, Liu Y, Zhang L (2017) Potential of quasi-inverted pyramid with both efficient light trapping and sufficient wettability for ultrathin c-Si/PEDOT:PSS hybrid solar cells. Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 168:226–235. https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RA19819H
Wang Y, Yang L, Liu Y, Mei Z, Chen W, Li J, Liang H, Kuznetsov A, Xiaolong D (2015) Maskless inverted pyramid texturization of silicon. Sci Rep 5:10843. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep10843
Wuithschick M, Paul B, Bienert R, Sarfraz A, Vainio U, Sztucki M, Kraehnert R, Strasser P, Rademann K, Emmerling F, Polte J (2013) Size-controlled synthesis of colloidal silver nanoparticles based on mechanistic understanding. Chem Mater 25:4679–4689. https://doi.org/10.1021/cm401851g
Yoo JS, Parm IO, Gangopadhyay U, Kim K, Dhungel SK, Mangalaraj D, Yi J (2006) Black silicon layer formation for application in solar cells. Solar Energy Mater Solar Cells 90:3085–3093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2006.06.015
Zhang C, Chen L, Zhu Y, Guan Z (2018) Fabrication of 20.19% efficient single-crystalline silicon solar cell with inverted pyramid microstructure. Nanoscale Res Lett 13:91. https://doi.org/10.1186/s11671-018-2502-9
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lahlouh, B., Al-Husseini, A. & Eniyazi, A. Structural and light trapping properties of nanoporous silicon micro-pyramid patterns encrusted with silver nanoparticles. Appl Nanosci 10, 117–126 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-019-01054-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-019-01054-w