Spherical and Cylindrical Plasmonic Nanoparticles for Enhanced Light Trapping in Photovoltaic Cells

The performance of thin film solar cells is primarily limited by very small light absorption in their ultrathin active region (1–2 µm). This bottleneck can be overcommed by utilizing plasmonic nanoparticle mediated light scattering and subsequently enlarged optical path length. In the present article, spherical and cylindrical plasmonic nanoparticles of metals i.e., Ag, Au and Rh on top of the active layer are considered and Mie scattering theory is used for investigating the effect of size, shape and plasmonic metal on scattering characteristics of nanoparticle (NP). Furtermore, optimized parameters for obtaining maximum scattering efficiencies in the desired part of the solar spectra are presented. The detailed comparison of scattering characteristics of spherical and cylindrical nanoparticles is also presented.