Plasmonic solar cell

Description
Photovoltaics is emerging as an important technology to solving the problem of climate change. To fully realize this potential it will be necessary to reduce the manufacturing costs of photovoltaic cells while maintaining high working efficiencies. One approach toward cost reduction is the use of very thin silicon absorbers deposited on cheap substrates. It is the so called thin-film photovoltaic technology. Unfortunately, the efficiencies of such silicon thin-film cells are very low if compared to wafer-based silicon cells, also because of the relatively low material thickness. A novel approach that has emerged recently for increasing the light absorption in thin film solar cell is the use of metal nanoparticles excited at their surface Plasmon resonance. By this way, an efficient method to increase the light absorption can be obtained. In the first part of this talk, a brief description of plasmonic materials and the nature of plasmonic excitation will be provided. Then, recent advances about the intersection of Plasmonics and Photovoltaics will be surveyed followed by an outlook on the future of solar cells based on these principles.
Organised by Isodiana Crupi