Performance Improvement of Ultrathin CIGS Solar Cells Using Al Plasmonic Nanoparticles: The Effect of the Position of Nanoparticles

CIGS solar cells are regarded to be one of the best thin film solar cells withefficiencies up to 22.6%, which exceeds the current multicrystalline Si record efficiency(21.9%). To make the promising CIGS solar cells more economic, reduction of costly Inand Ga elements through thinning of CIGS layer seems necessary. But, it causes the cellperformance degradation. This study is aimed to investigate the efficiency enhancementof ultrathin CIGS solar cells by using of Al plasmonic nanoparticles. Plasmonicnanoparticles can restrict, absorb, navigate or scatter the incident light. The role ofdifferent location of Al nanoparticles within the active layer was studied through opticaland electrical simulation utilizing FDTD and DEVICE solvers of Lumerical software.By using the spherical Au nanoparticles, the light absorption in the cell increaseddrastically. The highest ç=15.31% was achieved for the designed ultrathin CIGS solarcell decorated by Al nanoparticles located in the middle of the absorber layer.