Metal nanoparticles in a photovoltaic cell: Effect of metallic loss

We examined numerically the contribution of contrasting characteristics of metal nanoparticles, strong polarization and metallic loss, to the total efficiency of photovoltaic cells. A layer of nanoparticle array was chosen as a model. We found that depending on the location of the layer in the cell, the metallic loss offsets the enhanced photoabsorption due to the strong near field. A general procedure to reduce a nanoparticle layer into a sheet of effective continuous medium is presented, which greatly facilitates the quantitative analysis. Copyright 2011 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. [doi:10.1063/1.3665682]