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No Access Submitted: 24 June 2016 Accepted: 28 August 2016 Published Online: 15 September 2016

  • Numerical study of plasmonic absorption enhancement in semiconductor absorbers by metallic nanoparticles

Journal of Applied Physics 120, 113102 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4962459
Julian Hornich1,2,3, a), Christoph Pflaum1,2, Christoph Brabec1,3, and Karen Forberich3
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  • Julian Hornich
  • Christoph Pflaum
  • Christoph Brabec
  • Karen Forberich
ABSTRACT
We are studying the influence of spherical silver nanoparticles (AgNP) in absorbing media by numerically solving the Maxwell's equations. Our simulations show that the near-field absorption enhancement introduced by a single AgNP in the surrounding medium is increasing with the growing particle diameter. However, we observe that the relative absorption per particle volume is on a similar level for different particle sizes; hence, different numbers of particles with the same total volume yield the same near-field absorption enhancement. We also investigate the effect of non-absorbing shells around the AgNP with the conclusion that even very thin shells suppress the beneficial effects of the particles noticeably. Additionally, we include AgNP in an organic solar cell at different vertical positions with different particle spacings and observe the beneficial effects for small AgNP and the scattering dependent performance for larger particles.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT), the Cluster of Excellence “Engineering of Advanced Materials” at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the project Solar Technologies go Hybrid (SolTech), which are all funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the framework of the German excellence initiative. Karen Forberich acknowledges the support of the EU-project SOLPROCEL (“SOLUTION PROCESSED HIGH PERFORMANCE TRANSPARENT ORGANIC PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS”, Grant No. 604506). Julian Hornich acknowledges the use of the service and facilities of the Energie Campus Nürnberg (EnCn) and financial support through the “Aufbruch Bayern” initiative of the state of Bavaria. Computer resources for this project have been provided by the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing/Leibniz Supercomputing Centre under Grant No. pr87fe.

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  1. © 2016 Author(s). Published by AIP Publishing.

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