The Use of Plasmonic Metal Nanoparticles to Enhance The Opto-electronic Performance of Thin-Film/Ultrathin Film CdTe Solar Cells

Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) thin film solar cells (TFSCs) have recently become one of the most favorable candidates to replace the traditional amorphous Si TFSCs because of its high absorption coefficient, close to ideal band gap energy and low production cost. This computational study investigates ways to enhance the opto-electronic performance levels of CdTe TFSCs by coupling plasmonic silver nanoparticles on the CdTe absorbing substrate. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical analysis technique has been used to analyze different performance parameters including short circuit current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (Voc), fill-factor, output power, efficiency and others. Furthermore, this study also compares the opto-electronic performance levels of “plasmonic” CdTe TFSCs with “plasmonic” amorphous Si TFSCs. Additionally, investigations of the robustness of “plasmonic” CdTe TFSCs due to temperature variation and the performance of ultrathin CdTe absorber layer (< 250 nm thickness) is also presented. The results of this study show 13.47% increase in efficiency can be achieved for CdTe TFSCs by the use of plasmonic metal nanoparticles. Additionally, the results also strongly suggest that “plasmonic” CdTe TFSC performance levels are relatively stable across large temperature variations and can be up to 21 times more efficient than “plasmonic” Si TFSC for ultra-thin absorber layers.