Plasmonic induced light trapping enhancement in silicon nanowires hybrid solar cell using indium tin oxide nanoparticles

Abstract In this study, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) with different lengths was fabricated using the metal-catalyzed electroless etching method and used as the base structure of an inorganic semiconductor hybrid solar cell. This technique is economically attractive and allows us to easily control the physical nanostructure of the nanowires to match the light trapping mechanism of the 3D-structured hybrid solar cell. The length of the nanowire linearly increases with etching times. For solar cell fabrication, poly(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) was used as an organic semiconductor part. The plasmonic-induced light-trapping enhancement of indium tin oxide nanoparticles (ITO NPs) and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) mixed with PEDOT:PSS was adapted to improve solar cell performance. It was found that the hybrid solar cell, fabricated from SiNWs with 5 min-etching time, yielded the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE). Furthermore, using ITO NPs and AuNPs in a hole-transport layer of the SiNWs hybrid solar cell can improve the PCE to 50% more than the reference hybrid solar cell. The hybrid solar cell using the concentration between PEDOT:PSS and ITO NPs of 1:1/5 shows the highest PCE of 8.33%.