Foroutan Sina, Baghban Hamed
Appl Opt. 2016 May 1;55(13):3405-12. doi: 10.1364/AO.55.003405.
High scattering cross section of plasmonic nanoparticles in intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) based on quantum dots (QDs) can obviate the low photon absorption in QD layers. In this report, we present a modeling procedure to extract the optical and electrical characteristics of a GaAs-based plasmonic intermediate band solar cell (PIBSC). It is shown that metal nanoparticles (MNPs) that are responsible for scattering of incident photons in the absorber layer can lead to photocurrent enhancement, provided that an optimum size and density is calculated. Proper design of QD layers that control the intermediate energy band location, as well as the loss-scattering trade-off of MNPs, can result in an efficiency increase of ∼4.2% in the PIBSC compared to a similar IBSC, and an increase of ∼5.9% compared to a reference GaAs PIN cell. A comprehensive discussion on the effect of intermediate band region width and current-voltage characteristics of the designed cell is presented.
基于量子点（QD）的中间带太阳能电池（IBSC）中，等离子体纳米颗粒的高散射截面可消除量子点层中较低的光子吸收。在本报告中，我们提出了一种建模程序，以提取基于GaAs的等离子体中间带太阳能电池（PIBSC）的光学和电学特性。结果表明，负责吸收层中入射光子散射的金属纳米颗粒（MNP）可导致光电流增强，前提是计算出最佳尺寸和密度。适当设计控制中间能带位置的量子点层，以及金属纳米颗粒的损耗-散射权衡，与类似的中间带太阳能电池相比，可使等离子体中间带太阳能电池的效率提高约4.2%，与参考GaAs PIN电池相比提高约5.9%。本文还对设计电池的中间带区域宽度和电流-电压特性的影响进行了全面讨论。
