Nano Ag-enhanced energy conversion efficiency in standard commercial pc-Si solar cells and numerical simulations with finite difference time domain method

Nano Ag-enhanced energy conversion efficiency (ECE) in one standard commercial pc-Si solar cell utilizing the forward scattering by Ag nanoparticles on surface has been researched experimentally and simulatively in this paper. Directly assembling Ag nanoparticles (with size about 100nm) on the surface, it is found when the particle surface coverage is 10%, the ECE and the short circuit current density are increased by 2.8% and 1.4%, respectively. Without changing any existing structure of the ready-made solar cell, this facile and efficient method has huger applications than other methods. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC .[ http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4830418] Crystalline silicon solar cells always occupy the dominant position in photovoltaic market during the past decade, therein poly-crystalline silicon (pc-Si) solar cell is the most popular and wide-used product due to its low cost in contrast with single-crystalline silicon (sc-Si) solar cell and high energy conversion efficiency (ECE) compared with amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cell. 1,2 Surface texturing (ST) and