Photocurrent improvement of an ultra-thin silicon solar cell using the localized surface plasmonic effect of clustering nanoparticles

摘要： The cluster-shaped plasmonic nanostructures are used to manage the incident light inside an ultra-thin silicon solar cell. Here, for the first time, spherical, conical, pyramidal, and cylindrical nanoparticles as a form of a cluster in the rear side of a thin silicon cell are simulated using finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. By calculating the optical absorption and hence the photocurrent, it is shown that the clustering of nanoparticles significantly improves them. The photocurrent enhancement is the result of the plasmonic effects of clustering the nanoparticles. For more comparison, at first, a cell with a single nanoparticle at the rear side is evaluated. Then four smaller nanoparticles are put around it to make a cluster. The photocurrents of 20.478, 23.186, 21.427, and 21.243 mA/cm2 are obtained for the cells using clustering conical, spherical, pyramidal, cylindrical NPs at the backside, respectively. These values are 13.987, 16.901, 16.507, 17.926 mA/cm2 for the cell with one conical, spherical, pyramidal, cylindrical nanoparticle at the rear side, respectively. So, clustering significantly improves the photocurrents. Finally, the distribution of the electric field and the generation rate for the proposed structures are calculated.