Influence of Particle Shape on the Ability of Plasmonic Metal Core-Silica Shell Nanoparticles Embedded within the Absorbing Layer to Enhance the Opto-electronic Performance of Thin-Film Solar Cells

Abstract

This computational study investigates the enhancements in the opto-electronic performance of thin-film silicon solar cells due to the use of different shapes of plasmonic metal core-silica shell nanoparticles embedded inside the Si absorbing substrate. The different shapes of the silver core-silica shell nanoparticles that were investigated in this study were cubes, cylinders, pyramids, spheres and spheroids, respectively. Due to morphology-dependent properties, various shaped nanoparticles show unique optical characteristics. The most significant enhancements in the performance of the thin-film solar cells were obtained using a pyramid shaped silver nanoparticle core that was encompassed within a hollow pyramid-shaped silica shell. The conclusion reached in this study were made through rigorous finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations that calculated the plasmon resonance of the different shaped metal core-silica shell nanoparticles, optical absorption enhancement studies, short circuit current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (Voc), fillfactor, output power and optical near-field enhancements. The study concludes with a quick investigation of the feasibility of using a `sandwich' configuration where a spherical homogeneous metal nanoparticle was placed on top of the Si absorbing layer and a metal core-dielectric shell nanoparticle was embedded inside the Si layer to further enhance the opto-electrical performance of the thin-film solar cells.