Efficiency enhancement and reflectance reduction of thin film silicon plasmonic solar cells

Nano-particles have the potential to couple incident sunlight into localized modes, reducing reflection and increasing absorption, thereby significantly improving the performance of thin film solar cells. In this article, a plasmonic solar cell has been studied and modeled using TiO2 as a space layer on the top of the silicon solar cell and Indium nano-particles for its plasmonic scattering. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation has been performed to investigate the role of various thickness of the space layer and it has been verified with the experimental results. From the study, the optical reflectance and EQE responses for 15nm, 28nm, 59.5nm and 70nm thick TiO2 space layer has been demonstrated and an enhanced performance for the thickness of 59.5nm TiO2 has been noted compared with the other thickness.