Investigate the effectiveness of nanotechnologies for enhancement the efficiency of the single crystalline silicon solar cells

In this paper, gold thin films were prepared on n-type region of solar cell in a method of plasma sputtering technique with different thicknesses. The purpose is to enhance the conversion efficiency of single crystalline silicon solar cell compared to the bare cell. Different thicknesses of gold film 10 nm, 20 nm, and 30 nm were used to find the best thickness that improves efficiency. The obtained solar cell efficiency was (16.76 %) at (10 nm) thickness of gold film and (14.52 %) at (20 nm) whereas it was (4.64 %) for a bare solar cell. The reason for the high efficiency is the presence of free electrons in the nano-islands that disperse light when it falls on the gold film. This increases the amount of light entering the cell. The optical properties were also studied (absorbance, transmittance, and reflectance) of the gold thin film. The result showed that higher transmittance, less absorbance, and reflectance at a thickness of (10 nm).