Performance Improvement of Ultrathin CIGS Solar Cells Using Al Plasmonic Nanoparticles: The Effect of the Position of Nanoparticles

Subject Areas : Journal of Optoelectronical Nanostructures

Ali Abdolahzadeh Ziabari ¹ (Department of Physics, Lahijan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran)
Sahar Royanian ² (Department of Electrical Engineering, Nour Branch, Islamic Azad University, Nour, Iran)
Reza Yousefi ³ (Department of Electrical Engineering, Nour Branch, Islamic Azad University, Nour, Iran)
Saleh Ghoreishi ⁴ (Department of Electrical Engineering, Nour Branch, Islamic Azad University, Nour, Iran)

Received: 2020-12-02 Accepted : 2021-01-16 Published : 2020-11-01

Keywords: Surface Plasmon, FDTD, Al nanoparticles, CIGS, Light trapping,

Abstract :

CIGS solar cells are regarded to be one of the best thin film solar cells with
efficiencies up to 22.6%, which exceeds the current multicrystalline Si record efficiency
(21.9%). To make the promising CIGS solar cells more economic, reduction of costly In
and Ga elements through thinning of CIGS layer seems necessary. But, it causes the cell
performance degradation. This study is aimed to investigate the efficiency enhancement
of ultrathin CIGS solar cells by using of Al plasmonic nanoparticles. Plasmonic
nanoparticles can restrict, absorb, navigate or scatter the incident light. The role of
different location of Al nanoparticles within the active layer was studied through optical
and electrical simulation utilizing FDTD and DEVICE solvers of Lumerical software.
By using the spherical Au nanoparticles, the light absorption in the cell increased
drastically. The highest ç=15.31% was achieved for the designed ultrathin CIGS solar
cell decorated by Al nanoparticles located in the middle of the absorber layer.

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