Optimization of Plasmon-Enhanced Thin-Film Heterojunction Solar Cells

Author

Aiello, Giovanni ; Alfonzetti, Salvatore ; Rizzo, Santi Agatino ; Salerno, Nunzio

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Ing. ElettricaElettronica e Inf., Univ. degli Studi Catania, Catania, Italy

Volume

51

Issue

3

fYear

2015

fDate

Mar-15

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

In this paper, we optimize the size and position of silver hemispherical nanoparticles arranged in a regular array embedded in a thin-film heterojunction solar cell. The metallic nanoparticles are added in order to improve solar cell efficiency by exploiting the phenomenon of plasmon resonance. A finite-element code has been employed to compute the light scattered from the device and the optimization was performed at first by means of a genetic algorithm and then by means of the parallel self-adaptive low-high evaluation evolutionary algorithm.

Keywords

copper compounds; finite element analysis; gallium compounds; genetic algorithms; indium compounds; light scattering; nanoparticles; semiconductor heterojunctions; semiconductor thin films; silver; solar cells; surface plasmon resonance; ternary semiconductors; Ag-Cu(InGa)Se₂; finite-element code; genetic algorithm; light scattering; metallic nanoparticles; optimization; parallel self-adaptive low-high evaluation evolutionary algorithm; plasmon resonance; plasmon-enhanced thin-film heterojunction solar cells; silver hemispherical nanoparticles; solar cell efficiency; Finite element analysis; Heterojunctions; Nanoparticles; Optimization; Photovoltaic cells; Plasmons; Silver; Computational electromagnetics; electromagnetic scattering; evolutionary algorithms; finite-element method (FEM); genetic algorithms (GAs); nanoparticles; photovoltaic;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMAG.2014.2361272

Filename

7093408