Enhancement of Plasmonic Photovoltaics with Pyramidal Nanoparticles

Abstract Light trapping as a result of embedding plasmonic Nano-Particles (NPs) into Photovoltaics (PVs) has been recently used to achieve better optical performance compared to conventional PVs. This light trapping technique enhances the efficiency of PVs by confining the incident light into hot-spot field regions around the NPs, which possess higher absorption, thus more enhancing of photocurrent. This research aims to study the impact of embedding metallic pyramidal-shaped NPs inside the PV’s active region for enhancing the efficiency of plasmonic silicon PVs. The optical properties of the pyramidal-shaped NPs in the visible and near-infrared spectrum have been investigated.The light absorption into silicon PV is significantly enhanced by embedding periodic arrays of pyramidal NPs in the cell comparedto the case of bare silicon PV. Furthermore, the effects of varying the pyramidal-shaped NPs dimensions on the absorption enhancement are studied. In addition, a sensitivity analysis has been performed, which helps in identifying the allowed fabrication tolerance for each geometrical dimension. The performance ofthe proposed pyramidal NP is compared with other frequently used shapes, such as cylinder, cone and hemisphere. Poisson’s and Carrier’s continuity equations are formulated and solved for the current density-voltage characteristics associated with embedded pyramidal NPs with different dimensions. The optimized array of pyramidal NPs provides an enhancement of 41% in the generated current density if compared to the bare silicon cell.