title: Antireflection TiOxCoating with Plasmonic Metal Nanoparticles for Silicon Solar Cells.
abstract: It is known that the light scattering from the metal particles deposited on the surfaces of cells can be used for increasing light trapping in the solar cells. In this work, plasmonic structures are composite materials that consisted of silver nanoparticles embedded in dielectric films of TiOx-used as cell antireflection coating. The films are deposited by sol-gel method using spin-on technique. Microstructure of prepared samples is analyzed by SEM observation. Good homogenity and particles density was obtained by this simple, cheap, and short time-demanding method. We demonstrate that due to light scattering by metal particles, the plasmonic-ARC layer is more effective than TiOxlayer without Ag nanoparticles. Implementation of nanoparticles on bare cell surface was carried out too. The influence of the plasmonic structures on the silicon solar cells parameters is presented as well. We announce about 5 % additional growth in short circuit current for cells with nanoparticles.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science PAS, Reymonta 25, 30-059 Kraków, Poland.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Starowicz
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lipiński
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Berent
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Socha
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Szczepanowicz
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kruk
keywords: Photovoltaics; Plasmonics; Silicon solar cells; Silver nanoparticles