title: Broadband absorption enhancement in plasmonic nanoshells-based ultrathin microcrystalline-Si solar cells.
abstract: With the objective to conceive a plasmonic solar cell with enhanced photocurrent, we investigate the role of plasmonic nanoshells, embedded within a ultrathin microcrystalline silicon solar cell, in enhancing broadband light trapping capability of the cell and, at the same time, to reduce the parasitic loss. The thickness of the considered microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si) layer is only ~1/6 of conventional μc-Si based solar cells while the plasmonic nanoshells are formed by a combination of silica and gold, respectively core and shell. We analyze the cell optical response by varying both the geometrical and optical parameters of the overall device. In particular, the nanoshells core radius and metal thickness, the periodicity, the incident angle of the solar radiation and its wavelength are varied in the widest meaningful ranges. We further explain the reason for the absorption enhancement by calculating the electric field distribution associated to resonances of the device. We argue that both Fabry-Pérot-like and localized plasmon modes play an important role in this regard.
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.|Università degli Studi di Genova, Via Balbi 5, 16126 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Waseem
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Raja
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bozzola
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Pierfrancesco
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zilio
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Ermanno
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Miele
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Panaro
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Hai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Toma
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.|Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, Brockman Hall6100, Main MS-61, Houston, TX77005, USA.|Rice University, Laboratory for Nanophotonics, Smalley-Curl Institute, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alabastri
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Angelis
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy.|Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology &Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, PR China.
authors.forename: Remo Proietti
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Zaccaria