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Elongated Nanostructured Solar Cells with a Plasmonic Core

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Reviews in Plasmonics 2015

Part of the book series: Reviews in Plasmonics ((RIP,volume 2015))

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Abstract

In this chapter the effects of the plasmonic response in an elongated nano-scale solar cell with a silver nanoneedle core are explored by measuring photocurrents. The silver nanoneedles formed the support of a conformally grown hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) n-i-p junction around it. A spherical morphology of the solar cell functions as a nano-lens, focusing incoming light directly on the plasmonic silver nanoneedle. We found that plasmonics, geometric optics, and Fresnel reflections affect the nanostructured solar cell performance, depending strongly on light incidence angle and polarization. Besides the plasmonic effects, nano-focusing, and orthogonalization of carrier and photon pathways are simultaneously present at illumination of this structure. In this chapter the photovoltaics characterization techniques and simulations are explained and discussed as well. This work provides valuable insight in solar cell processes in which novel concepts such as plasmonics, elongated nanostructures, and nano-lenses are used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanophotonics–Physics of Devices, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, 80000, 3508 TA, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marcel Di Vece

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  1. Marcel Di Vece
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Correspondence to Marcel Di Vece .

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  1. Institute of Fluorescence, University of Maryland Baltimore County, BALTIMORE, Maryland, USA

    Chris D. Geddes

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Di Vece, M. (2016). Elongated Nanostructured Solar Cells with a Plasmonic Core. In: Geddes, C. (eds) Reviews in Plasmonics 2015. Reviews in Plasmonics, vol 2015. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24606-2_9

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