Plasmonic photovoltaics using nano crescent antennas

In this paper a novel nanoparticle structure has been presented to be used in plasmonic photovoltaic to enhance its efficiency. The proposed structure enhances the light absorption inside the active layer of the photovoltaics (PV) in the visible and near infrared range of frequencies (200-900 THz). In this work, the proposed nano-antenna, nantenna, takes the shape of crescent with a gap on its narrow side. This nantenna is embedded inside the photovoltaic cell resulting in a highly confined near-field around the nanoparticle and within the semiconductor forming the PV. The extinction cross-section of the proposed nanoparticle in vacuum has been calculated versus wavelength. Also, the modal fields are studied. The effect of embedding this crescent nanoparticle in a silicon photovoltaic is investigated by comparing its absorption with the conventional disk nanoparticle. The proposed structure enhances the light absorption leading to improvement of the efficiency of the PV cells.