Plasmon resonance in metallic nanoparticles : application to solar cells

Title : Plasmon resonance in metallic nanoparticles : application to solar cells

Supervisor: A. Slaoui
Co-supervisor : T. Fix

Laboratory: ICube, MaCEPV team

University of Strasbourg - CNRS

Collaboration(s): S. Lecler (IPP team)

Summary:
Context: development of new generation silicon solar cells

The development and competitiveness of photovoltaics (PV) can be improved thanks to an increase of cell efficiency and thanks to manufacturing at lower cost. The PhD topic proposed can fulfill these two objectives by implementing an advanced concept into solar cells, plasmonics. New techniques use conductive nanoparticle inclusions in dielectric layers to increase the absorption of PV cells. The solar light excites plasmons, electromagnetic waves at the surface of these particles, that confine the electromagnetic field inside the cell, thus increasing its efficiency. The increase of silicon cell absorption in the infrared part of the solar spectrum should thanks to plasmonics enable a decrease of the thickness of silicon used and thus reduce the silicon related costs of the cells. The aim of the PhD will be to demonstrate the benefit of plasmonics for PV. A first part will be dedicated to the modeling of plasmonic phenomena applied to PV in order to determine the most promising systems that will be developed experimentally in the second part. The theoretical part will be based on rigourous vectorial electromagnetic simulations in collaboration with the IPP team to study the transmission, reflection and absorption of a monolayer of nanoparticles, of silver for example, of size from 5 to 200 nm. On the experimental side, nanoparticles will be obtained on the one hand thanks to the ICube implanter and on the other hand by chemical techniques thanks to collaborations.

Contact: tfix@unistra.fr