Enhancement in the Performance of a-Si:H Thin-Film Solar Cells by Light Trapping from Plasmonic Back Reflector

\Light trapping is a very essential part of thin-film solar cells to improve their performance and make them comparable to the conventional c-Si solar cells. In this paper, we report the efficiency enhancement of 50% in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si: H) thin-film solar cells by light trapping from silver nanoparticles incorporated as plasmonic back reflector. Ag NPs are grown by the solid-state dewetting process on the different substrate configurations. Strong light scattering from Ag NPs as plasmonic back reflector configuration results in enhancement of diffused reflectance and haze in reflection throughout the visible and NIR wavelength range. Consequently, excellent light trapping by plasmonic back reflector in solar cells is observed. A broadband enhancement in quantum efficiency is shown by a-Si:H thin-film solar cells fabricated on the plasmonic back reflector with a gain of 47% in short-circuit current density (J(sc)) as compared to the flat back reflector. As a result, the improvement in the performance of the a-Si:H thin-film solar with plasmonic back reflector is observed corresponding to an efficiency (eta) of 8.4% against 5.6% efficiency of the a-Si:H thin-film solar cell with flat back reflector, respectively.