Investigating the Effects of Edge Sharpness of Triangular Prism-Shaped Plasmonic Nanoparticles on Confining Light to Improve the Opto-Electronic Performance of Thin Film Solar Cells

This study uses computational techniques to investigate how the sharpness of edges on plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NPs), specifically triangular prisms, affects their light scattering and confining abilities in nanoscale regions. Various orientations of NPs were studied to assess their capability to confine light on the absorbing layer of silicon thin-film solar cells (TFSCs), thus investigating the possibility of enhancing the opto-electronic performance of the TFSCs. Optical data for different orientations of the NPs were obtained, and parameters such as the sharpness of the NPs were varied to investigate their correlation with maximizing the short circuit current density (J<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sc</inf>). The highest value for Jsc was found for opposing triangular aluminum prisms having a corner radius of 35nm that displayed a J<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SC</inf> enhancement of over 50% compared to bare Si TFSC. The results indicate that more rounded edges in plasmonic NPs are suited to enhance the opto-electronic performance of TFSCs.