Enhancing power conversion efficiency of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by plasmonic effect of Ag nanoparticles embedded in SiNx layer

In this paper, we demonstrate that the performance of the industrial multicrystalline silicon solar cells can be improved by embedding the silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) into the SiNx layer. On the one hand, the cells have a certain optical loss in short wavelengths near the plasmonic resonance frequency of Ag-NPs, but their open circuit voltages and filling factors are increased due to depressed surface recombination as those short wavelength photons are mainly absorbed by Ag-NPs instead of the surface; on the other hand, the cells show strong absorption in long wavelengths, which can be attributed to the forward-scattering effect of Ag-NPs. Taking together, UV-absorbing Ag-NPs may act as a “sunscreen” to shield the UV damage, while improve the cell efficiency from 18.05 % to 18.25 % by embedding proper Ag-NPs. The techniques presented in this work can be easily incorporated into the current mc-Si solar cell production line, thus have great potential for the mass practical application.