Use of Hybrid Bow-Tie Based Plasmonic Nanostructures to Enhance the Opto-Electronic Efficiency of Thin-Film Solar Cells

This study involves the response of thin-film silicon solar cells to the use of hybrid bow-tie based plasmonic metal nanostructures that modifies its corresponding opto-electronic behavior. A single set of bow-tie, one vertex of each of the two triangular (pyramidal) silver nanoparticles facing each other with a spherical nanoparticle in the middle, were placed on top of a thin film silicon substrate. Analysis of the absorption of incident sunlight within solar cell with a spherical particle and a bow-tie based nanostructure was completed and the short circuit current density, open circuit voltage and the output power generated from the solar cell structure due to the effect of both spherical and the spherical-pyramidal hybrid plasmonic nanoparticles were compared. It has been observed that the spherical-pyramidal hybrid bow-tie based plasmonic nanostructure shows larger values than spherical nanoparticles alone in terms of the short circuit current generated, the fill-factor, open circuit voltage and the output power generated. These results show that the effect of plasmonic metal nanoparticles to increase the opto-electronic efficiency of thin-film solar cells is not limited to only spherical nanoparticles alone but extends to other rarely used plasmonic nanostructures. Furthermore, these results indicate that an appropriately designed multi-particle hybrid plasmonic nanostructures can significantly enhance the optoelectronic performance of plasmonic solar cells when compared to the enhancements generated by single type of nanoparticle-based plasmonic solar cells.