Plasmonic tuning of gold doped thin films for layers of photovoltaic devices
25 Mar 2016-Vol. 1722, Iss: 1, pp 200013
TL;DR: In this paper, the plasmonic nanoparticles provided an important enhancement in the trapping of photons in the active layer of the solar cells by means of interaction between incident light and nanoparticles.
Abstract: In order to increase the absorption rates in solar cells, increasing research activities on the plasmonic nanostructures are followed carefully. The plasmonic nanoparticles provides an important enhancement in the trapping of photons in the active layer of the solar cells by means of interaction between incident light and plasmonic nanoparticles. In order to obtain this approach, under of 5×10−4 mbar and 1×10−2 mbar ambient argon gas pressure, gold thin film was deposited on the silicon substrate by applying PLD system. The morphology of thin films obtained was investigated by AFM and SEM considering the effect of Ar gas pressure on the plasma plume. SPR peaks for Au nanoparticles deposited under 5×10−4 mbar and 1×10−2 mbar Ar gas pressure were observed at 756 nm and 658 nm wavelengths respectively. It has been stated that the SPR peak in the infrared is depend on the near field interaction between Au nanoparticles. Furthermore, when the pressure is increased to 1×10−2 mbar Ar, it has been observed that t...
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TL;DR: In this article, the effects of laser irradiation on the structure, morphology and optical properties of the samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV-VIS-NIR double beam spectrometer and Raman system, respectively.
20 citations
17 Feb 2017
TL;DR: In this article, a plasmonic metal nanoparticles of Ag among others that have strong LSPR in near UV range were grown on micro slide glass at 25-36 mJ laser pulse energies under by PLD using ns-Nd:YAG laser.
Abstract: Noble metal nano-structures such as Ag, Cu, Au are used commonly to increase power conversion efficiency of the solar cell by using their surface plasmons. The plasmonic metal nanoparticles of Ag among others that have strong LSPR in near UV range. They increase photon absorbance via embedding in the active semiconductor of the solar cell. Thin films of Ag are grown in the desired particle size and interparticle distance easily and at low cost by PLD technique. Ag nanoparticle thin films were grown on micro slide glass at 25-36 mJ laser pulse energies under by PLD using ns-Nd:YAG laser. The result of this work have been presented by carrying out UV-VIS and AFM analysis. It was concluded that a laser energy increases, the density and size of Ag-NPs arriving on the substrate increases, and the interparticle distance was decreases. Therefore, LSPR wavelength shifts towards to longer wavelength region.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the nonlinear optical properties of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films produced on microscope slide glass substrates at room temperature (RT) using Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method has been presented.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a tunable localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) was achieved on thermally annealed thin films composed of Au deposited on Ag, which improved the grain growth and orientation of Au/Ag bimetallic thin films.
3 citations
17 Feb 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the location of LSPR wavelength can be tuned by controlling nanoparticles sizes and size distributions of nanoparticles, shapes and interparticle distances, this morphological changes are provided by controlling system parameters in PLD.
Abstract: Copper is a low cost metal and its nanoparticles have a unique optical properties such as LSPR. The location of LSPR wavelength can be tuned by controlling nanoparticles sizes and size distributions of nanoparticles, shapes and interparticle distances. This morphological changes are provided by controlling system parameters in PLD. For this work, 48000 and 36000 laser pulses from Nd:YAG laser were applied to produce Cu nanoparticle thin films. These thin films were characterised by performing UV-VIS absorption spectroscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) analysis. When the number of laser pulse decreases, the size of Cu nanoparticles and the number of nanoparticles arriving on the substrate are reduced, and LSPR peak of thin films are red shifted depending on the geometrical shapes of the Cu nanoparticles. We have driven a conclusion in this work that LSPR properties of Cu nanoparticles can be tuned by proposed method.
3 citations
References
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TL;DR: In this paper, the surface plasmon response of metal nanoparticles is studied for different shapes and physical environments, and the modification of these surface plasmons by different surrounding media and the presence of a substrate or other nanoparticles are also discussed.
Abstract: The surface plasmon response of metal nanoparticles is studied for different shapes and physical environments. For polyhedral nanoparticles, the surface plasmon resonances are studied as a function of the number of faces and vertices. The modification of these surface plasmons by different surrounding media and the presence of a substrate or other nanoparticles is also discussed. We found that polyhedral nanoparticles composed with less faces show more surface plasmon resonances, and as the nanoparticle becomes more symmetric, the main surface plasmon resonance is blue-shifted. It is also found that the corners induce more surface plasmons in a wider energy range. In the presence of a substrate, multipolar plasmon resonances are induced, and as the nanoparticle approaches the substrate, such resonances are red-shifted. The interaction among nanoparticles also induces multipolar resonances, but they can be red or blue-shifted depending on the polarization of the external field.
1,574 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, surface plasmon excitation in pairs of identical Au nanoparticles by optical transmission spectroscopy was studied and it was shown that with decreasing interparticle distance the surface plasm resonance shifts to longer wavelengths for a polarization direction parallel to the long particle pair axis whereas a blueshift is found for the orthogonal polarization.
1,432 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a back-contact light trapping surface for a-Si:H solar cells was designed and fabricated using a large-scale, relative inexpensive nano-imprint technique, which showed enhanced efficiency over standard randomly textured cells.
Abstract: Plasmonic nanostructures have been recently investigated as a possible way to improve absorption of light in solar cells. The strong interaction of small metal nanostructures with light allows control over the propagation of light at the nanoscale and thus the design of ultrathin solar cells in which light is trapped in the active layer and efficiently absorbed. In this paper we review some of our recent work in the field of plasmonics for improved solar cells. We have investigated two possible ways of integrating metal nanoparticles in a solar cell. First, a layer of Ag nanoparticles that improves the standard antireflection coating used for crystalline and amorphous silicon solar cells has been designed and fabricated. Second, regular and random arrays of metal nanostructures have been designed to couple light in waveguide modes of thin semiconductor layers. Using a large-scale, relative inexpensive nano-imprint technique, we have designed a back-contact light trapping surface for a-Si:H solar cells which show enhanced efficiency over standard randomly textured cells.
366 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the physical processes of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) change strongly from the initial light absorption in a target to the final deposition and growth of a film, and the importance of these processes during the entire PLD process is discussed.
223 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of the ambient gas on the spatial and mean energy distribution of particles deposited at the distant detector is considered, and a modification of the deposited film thickness profiles due to collisions of the ablated particles with ambient gas is shown.
Abstract: Laser ablation from a binary target into a diluted gas background is studied by means of a Monte Carlo simulation. The influence of the ambient gas on the spatial and mean energy distribution of particles deposited at the distant detector is considered. Thermalization of the particles, the random scattering effect and the backscattering of particles were observed. Considerable modification of the deposited film thickness profiles due to collisions of the ablated particles with the ambient gas is shown. The increase of the ambient gas pressure was found to affect the stoichiometry distribution of deposited and backscattered particles. The study is of a particular interest for the development of the thin film growing technique known as pulsed laser deposition.
95 citations