Improvement of light-harvesting efficiency of amorphous silicon solar cell coated with silver nanoparticles anchored via
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Improvement of light‑harvesting efficiency of amorphous silicon solar cell coated with silver nanoparticles anchored via (3‑mercaptopropyl) trimethoxysilane Bing‑Yuan Tay1 · Swee‑Yong Chee1 · Chee‑Leong Lee2 · Suhaila Sepeai3 · Mohammod Aminuzzaman1 Received: 16 March 2020 / Accepted: 4 June 2020 © King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2020
Abstract Owing to small size effect and large surface area, silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) exhibit special physical properties and are widely used in different applications. One of the significant applications is that Ag NPs can be coated on the glass surface of solar cell to increase the light-harvesting efficiency of solar cell due to the plasmonic resonance and scattering effect. In this study, Ag NPs used for the coating of solar cells were synthesized via a chemical reduction method. The effect of the concentration of sodium borohydride ( NaBH4) as reducing agent and 1-dodecanethiol (DDT) as capping agent on the size and shape of Ag NPs synthesized have been investigated. The synthesized Ag NPs were characterized using UV–vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy; while the particle size, morphology and topology of Ag NPs were examined by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. By coating the glass surface of amorphous silicon solar cells with a uniform array of Ag NPs with the particle size of > 350 nm, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) enhancement of approximately 41% has been achieved. (3-mercaptopropyl) trimethoxysilane (MPTMS) was used as the adhesion promoter to anchor Ag NPs on the silicon surface of solar cells. With 7% of MPTMS, the array of Ag NPs formed on the glass surface was found being the most evenly distributed with a densely packed surface coverage, which resulted in 46% of PCE enhancement of the silicon solar cells. Keywords Adhesion promoter · Light-harvesting efficiency · (3-mercaptopropyl) trimethoxysilane · Silicon solar cell · Silver nanoparticles
Introduction In the past few decades, metallic nanoparticles with their extraordinary size-dependent properties have received much attention from scientists. This is due to the remarkable optical properties of these nanoparticles as a result of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) (Khan and Saeed 2017). Moreover, the unique properties of nanoparticles such as * Swee‑Yong Chee [email protected] 1
Faculty of Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Barat, 31900 Kampar, Perak, Malaysia
2
School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, 54, Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, 10050 Penang, Malaysia
3
Solar Energy Research Institute, Ground Floor, Research Complex, National University of Malaysia (UKM), 43650 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
chirality, catalysis, large surface energies, electrochemical characteristics, photoluminescence, plasmon excitation and quantum confinement have resulted in their exploitation in various applications in different fields (Swami et a
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