PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.
Metal nanoparticles are known for their unique optical properties due to surface plasmon excitations. The far field and
near field effects from these metal particles have been captured to enhance efficiency of thin film solar cells by way of
light trapping. Our group has extensively studied the different design parameters for a plasmon enhanced solar cell like
effect of metal size/shape, location, effect of dielectric layer thickness and also the effect of plasmons on the electrical
properties like passivation of cells. Whilst identifying and minimising parasitic absorption losses in these metal particles
are important and is attracting lot of attention, we choose to look at a more interesting issue of ageing effects. Plasmonics
at the moment promises efficiency enhancements exceeding 30% including associated losses in metals. However as is
needed for solar cells, the technologies incorporated have to stand the test of time. In this work we look at the age effects
on the plasmon performance by analysing our cells over time. Our preliminary results show that plasmons supported by
silver metal nanoparticles can degrade by upto 10% with time. Metal nanoparticles when exposed to air can get tarnished
easily causing degradation of the plasmonic properties. This will result in weakening of the scattering and reduce light
trapping effects. We also look at ways of minimizing the ageing losses by overcoating. MgF2 is used as the dielectric
film to overcoat metal nanoparticles preventing degradation and also to isolate MNP layer from the back surface
reflector of cells. Our results show that such a rear scheme brings an additional current enhancement over interested
wavelength region improving over time.
S. Pillai,Y. Yang,Y. Jiang, andM. Green
"Ageing effects on plasmonic properties for solar cell applications", Proc. SPIE 8923, Micro/Nano Materials, Devices, and Systems, 892335 (7 December 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2035190
ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.
The alert did not successfully save. Please try again later.
S. Pillai, Y. Yang, Y. Jiang, M. Green, "Ageing effects on plasmonic properties for solar cell applications," Proc. SPIE 8923, Micro/Nano Materials, Devices, and Systems, 892335 (7 December 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2035190