Optimal Design of Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells Exploiting Plasmonic Scattering from Metallic and Dielectric Nanoparticles

Thin-film solar cells enable a strong reduction of the amount of silicon needed to produce photovoltaic panels but their efficiency worsens. Placing metallic or dielectric nanoparticles over the silicon substrate increases the light trapping into the panel, thanks to the plasmonic scattering from nanoparticles at the surface of the cell. The goal of this paper is to optimize the geometry of a thin-film solar cell with silver and silica nanoparticles in order to improve its efficiency, taking into account the amount of silver. The PSALHE evolutionary algorithm is applied to perform the optimization.