Designing optical path length, photonic, and plasmonic effects into nanostructured solar cells

Author

Nam, Wook Jun ; Ji, Liming ; Varadan, Vasundara V. ; Fonash, Stephen J.

Author_Institution

Center for Nanotechnol. Educ. & Utilization, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

15-18 Aug. 2011

Firstpage

1409

Lastpage

1412

Abstract

The numerical modeling presented here shows the carrier collection and light management potential of nano-scale structure designs in solar cells. This design evaluation procedure includes scattering phenomena arising from photonic (periodic structure) and plasmonic effects and also the effective absorber length impact arising from morphology. This design work points to short circuit current densities of over 17mA/cm² being attainable under AM1.5G from an a-Si:H absorber nominal thickness of 200nm.

Keywords

hydrogen; light scattering; nanophotonics; optical design techniques; photonic band gap; plasmonics; silicon; solar absorber-convertors; solar cells; Si:H; absorber length; carrier collection; light management; nanoscale structure; nanostructured solar cells; optical path length; periodic structure; photonic effect; photonic structure; plasmonic effects; scattering phenomena; size 200 nm; Absorption; Charge carrier processes; Computer architecture; Microprocessors; Nanoscale devices; Photonics; Photovoltaic cells;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO), 2011 11th IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Portland, OR

ISSN

1944-9399

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1514-3

Electronic_ISBN

1944-9399

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NANO.2011.6144594

Filename

6144594