Surface plasmon polaritons in metallic nanostructures: Fundamentals and their application to thin-film solar cells

Abstract

A surface plasmon polariton is a hybrid excitation where the electromagnetic field is resonantly coupled to a free carrier oscillation in noble metals. Once excited, a large enhancement of the local electromagnetic field and the amount of scattered light can be observed. Since both properties are beneficial for the purpose ofphoton management, in the past several years an increasing share of research was devoted to exploit such effects in solar cells. In this contribution, we review the fundamentals of surface plasmon polaritons and outline different approaches how to incorporate metallic nanostructures into solar cells. We detail to which extent they are useful to enhance the solar cell efficiency and describe different schemes for their experimental implementation. Emphasis is put on thin-film solar cells, since in this class of solar cells metallic nanostructures may have the largest impact. This chapter is written with the intention to make researchers from either the field of plasmonics or the field of photovoltaics familiar with their respective counterpart to foster research in this applied domain. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.