Lead Chief Investigator

Kylie R Catchpole CSES, CSES, Australian National University

Project Title

Nanoplasmonic Solar Cells

Brief Description for General Publications

With increasing worldwide awareness of issues like climate change and global warming, recent years have seen an enormous increase in research in developing renewable (clean) energy sources. Photovoltaics is already a major renewable energy source. Our research is aimed at bringing down the cost of electricity generated using solar cells, by developing novel light trapping techniques, that can also be applied to thin film solar cells. We use numerical modeling to simulate various configurations of metal/dielectric nanoparticle arrays placed on a solar cell to determine the optimal conditions. The numerical simulation results are then used to fabricate ‘ideal’ nanoparticle assemblies to experimentally determine the increase in performance characteristics of solar cells. Thus far, we have been able to demonstrate ~25% increase in the photocurrent over the light trapping region using this technique. We are keen on further improving these results and access to a faster computer system would considerably increase our outputs.