Analisys and Syntesys of Thin-Film Solar Cells with Metallic Nanoparticles

In this thesis it is shown that the FEM-RBCI method can be successfully applied to the analysis of the scattering of time-harmonic electromagnetic waves at optical frequencies from metallic nanoparticles of arbitrary shape. Moreover, the optimization of a thin solar cell with metallic nanoparticles is performed by means of Genetic Algorithms and the Finite Element Method. The goal is to design a solar cell which shows good performances in terms of sunlight absorption. Suitable Genetic Algorithms with varying crossover and mutation probabilities are employed. The optimum is reached in about half the time required by the standard procedure. The optimized solar cell performs well in the sunlight frequency bandwidth.