A feasibility study for controlling self-organized production of plasmonic enhancement interfaces for solar cells

The decoration of metal nanoparticles (MNPs) by the self-organized mechanism of dewetting is utilized as a suitable method for plasmonic interface integration to large area full-scale solar cell (SC) devices. Reflection measurements are performed on both flat and textured silicon (Si) SCs in order to investigate the local plasmonic resonances of the MNPs. The effects of particle size and thickness of silicon nitride (Si3N4)anti-reflection coating layer are investigated by reflection measurements and the shift of plasmon resonance peak position. It is found that surface roughness, annealing time, annealing temperature, and varying Si3N4 thickness can be used as mechanisms to control the size distribution, shape of the resultant nano-islands, and SC efficiency. The findings on the most suitable nanoparticle system production parameters by this method, depends on the applied substrate properties which are expected to guide further applications of plasmonic interfaces and also to the other kinds of device structures in the ultimate quest for attaining affordable high efficiency SCs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.