Integration of Light Trapping Silver Nanostructures in Hydrogenated Microcrystalline Silicon Solar Cells by Transfer Printing

Hidenori Mizuno; Hitoshi Sai; Koji Matsubara; Hidetaka Takato; Michio Kondo

doi:10.3791/53276

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Method Article

Integration of Light Trapping Silver Nanostructures in Hydrogenated Microcrystalline Silicon Solar Cells by Transfer Printing

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DOI:

10.3791/53276

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November 9th, 2015

Hidenori Mizuno¹ , Hitoshi Sai² , Koji Matsubara² , Hidetaka Takato¹ , Michio Kondo¹

¹Renewable Energy Research Center, Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Koriyama, Fukushima, Japan, ²Research Center for Photovoltaic Technologies, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Summary

A viable transfer printing-based methodology to introduce plasmonic metal nanostructures in solar cells is described. Using nanopillar poly(dimethylsiloxane) stamps, an Ag-based ordered nanodisk array was integrated with standard hydrogenated microcrystalline Si solar cells, which led to improved device performances due to plasmonic light trapping.

Abstract

One of the potential applications of metal nanostructures is light trapping in solar cells, where unique optical properties of nanosized metals, commonly known as plasmonic effects, play an important role. Research in this field has, however, been impeded owing to the difficulty of fabricating devices containing the desired functional metal nanostructures. In order to provide a viable strategy to this issue, we herein show a transfer printing-based approach that allows the quick and low-cost integration of designed metal nanostructures with a variety of device architectures, including solar cells. Nanopillar poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) stamps were fabricated from a commercially available nanohole plastic film as a master mold. On this nanopatterned PDMS stamps, Ag films were deposited, which were then transfer-printed onto block copolymer (binding layer)-coated hydrogenated microcrystalline Si (µc-Si:H) surface to afford ordered Ag nanodisk structures. It was confirmed that the resulting Ag nanodisk-incorporated µc-Si:H solar cells show higher performances compared to a cell without the transfer-printed Ag nanodisks, thanks to plasmonic light trapping effect derived from the Ag nanodisks. Because of the simplicity and versatility, further device application would also be feasible thorough this approach.

Introduction

There has been a long-standing demand for the application of functional nanostructures in a broad range of technological field. One of the expectations for this trend is to open new design of device architectures leading to improved or innovative performances. In the field of solar cells, for example, the use of metal nanostructures has been actively explored because of their intriguing optical (i.e., plasmonic) properties,¹ potentially beneficial to construct effective light trapping systems.^2,3 Indeed, some theoretical studies^4-6 have suggested that such plasmonic light trapping could achieve effects exceeding the convention....