Plasmonic Scattering Structures for Improved Performance of Thin Film Solar Cells

M. Vijayalakshmi [1], R. Divya [1], R. C. Thiagarajan [1],
[1] ATOA Scientific Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, India
发布日期 2015

Solar Photovoltaics is an alternate green energy source to the depleting fossil fuel technologies. Solar energy cost needs to be reduced significantly for competitiveness and proliferation in residential solar. Thin film photovoltaics is a promising technology for the growth of solar industry.

In this paper, nano scale plasmonic structures are explored for performance improvement. These structures provide novel ways to guide concentrate and trap light within thin film solar cells for enhancing absorbance and the overall performance. Plasmonic structures for sub wavelength scattering, nano scale antenna and corrugated guides are under development. In this paper, novel multilevel scattering element is investigated to increase the solar absorbance. Nano plasmonic scattering structures embedded in a dielectric medium is modelled leveraging COMSOL Multiphysics® 2D Electromagnetic wave propagation in the frequency domain with periodic boundary conditions. The performance of the plasmonic structures depends on the polarization of the incident wave, hence, both transverse electric and transverse magnetic simulations are considered. The model is set to sweep across the incident wave frequency range from 400 nm to 800 nm and to measure reflection, transmissions and absorption coefficients.