Cheap and efficient plasmonic solar cell

摘要

Plasmonic solar cell is a very promising structure for high efficient solar cell application. It has some unique characteristics that allow high energy localization and higher solar energy absorption. Most of the proposed designs are based on using noble metals such as gold and silver to achieve the plasmonic effect. These metals are, however, expensive and increase the cost of the solar cell. Thus, the need to propose novel and cheap material with plasmonic like effect is of prime importance. In this work we demonstrate the applications of TiN that has good plasmonic like effect over wide bandwidth. A detailed comparative study of TiN and silver in an optimized design is presented, and we report comparable TiN field localization and light scattering effects. In addition, TiN is more compatible with the CMOS fabrication technology than the conventional plasmonic metals, which can even ease the integration with other optoelectric devices. Should the electrical performance be further studied and optimized, the overall efficiency of the solar cell can be maintained and/or enhanced and total cost/watt dramatically reduced.