Elevating Efficiency in Silicon Thin-Film Solar Cells: Exploring the Influence of Monomer and Dimer Plasmonic Nanoparticles

This investigation employs optoelectronic simulation to explore the performance of silicon thin-film solar cells with the addition of plasmonic nanoparticles. The main focus of this study is to increase the efficiency of silicon thin-film solar cells by introducing plasmonic nanoparticles in both monomer and dimer configurations. The utilization of plasmonic nanoparticles in silicon thin-film solar cells exhibits excellent results. Initially, an 8.62% efficiency was achieved by simulating a basic silicon thin-film solar cell with an absorber layer only 2µm thick. However, the efficiency increased to 13.5% after incorporating a silver nanoparticles into the absorber layer. Moreover, using nanoparticles in a dimer form resulted in an efficiency of 18.3%. This experiment suggests that nanoparticles with a specific arrangement, where two particles are closely positioned, can significantly improve the efficiency of silicon thin-film solar cells.