Growth of silver nanoparticles on titanium dioxides layer for plasmonic-based solid-state solar cells

摘要

In this work, we presented a simple method for the growth of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) which forms spontaneously during the RF sputtering onto titanium dioxides (TiO_2) layer, prepared by spray pyrolysis. The formation of Ag NPs is achieved due to the rough nature of the TiO_2 layer. As, TiO_2 is a wide band gap semiconductor material, which would only absorb the UV part of the solar spectrum. The photovoltaic activity of TiO_2 based solid state photovoltaic system can be further improved using metallic nanostructures. The Ag NPs forms a Schottky barrier solar cell with the TiO_2 layer. Upon illumination, hot electrons from Ag NPs gets injected into the TiO_2 layer which leads to charge separation. Here, Ag NPs works as absorbing material in the visible region, are capable of increasing the absorption of TiO_2 and hence the performance of plasmonic-based solid-state TiO_2/Ag solar cells.