Plasmonic Metamaterial Perovskite Solar Cells: Fundamental Tradeoffs, Limitations, and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential and limitations of incorporating plasmonic nanoparticles into perovskite solar cells to enhance their efficiency, using theoretical models to understand the fundamental tradeoffs involved.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of how plasmonic nanoparticles can affect perovskite solar cell performance, highlighting the fundamental limits and opportunities.

Findings

Dispersing plasmonic NPs can increase the effective refractive index of perovskite.

Enhanced near-field intensity from NPs can theoretically improve light absorption.

There are fundamental tradeoffs and limitations in using plasmonic NPs for efficiency gains.

Abstract

Whether dispersal of plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) within a perovskite active layer can increase the efficiency of solar cells is a long-standing question. It is well known that inclusion of metallic NPs in an active layer can boost the surrounding near-field intensity around them owing to the dipolar localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR, also called antenna effect), which can increase light absorption by solar cells. However, the use of plasmonic NPs in perovskite solar cells has been barely reported, and it is not known whether inserting plasmonic NPs into a perovskite active layer produces any performance advantage compared with a pure perovskite counterpart. We explore the fundamental and practical limits of plasmonic metamaterial perovskite solar cells by applying effective medium theory and a detailed balance analysis. Our results indicate that an increase in effective refractive index of perovskite through dispersed plasmonic NPs can in principle enhance the performance of solar cells.