Tuning of Light Trapping and Surface Plasmon Resonance in Silver Nanoparticles/c-Si Structures for Solar Cells

Abstract

In this work, we investigate silver (Ag) nanoparticle-related plasmonic effect on light absorption in Si substrate. Ag nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) deposited on top of Si were used to capture and couple incident light into these structures by forward scattering. We demonstrate that we can control nanoparticle size and shape while varying deposition time and annealing parameters. By the increase of the total time of the reaction process, morphology of Ag-NPs evolutes affecting the number and the width of surface plasmon resonance peaks, whereas for changed annealing parameters (temperature and time), the effect is more pronounced on the broadening and the position of peaks. Specific morphology of Ag-NPs can exhibit an interesting enhancement of optical properties which enables plasmon-related application in photovoltaic solar cells.