Investigating the contribution effect of carrier generation rates to enhance optical absorption in single /a-Si/AuNPs/, /AuNPs@TiO2/ plasmonic structures and their dual combined /a-Si/AuNPs/AuNPs@TiO2/ plasmonic structure for possible application in solid-state plasmonic solar cells

Presently, the applications of metallic nanoparticles, nanomaterials, and plasmonic structures have been widely using into the different plasmonic solar cells aiming for enhancing the power conversation efficiency. When nanoparticles (Au, Ag...) added into anatase TiO2 structure being in solar cell, then different plasmonic effects of plasmon excitation surface plasmonic resonance will be stimulated by incident light, the electron oscillation, scattering, and guiding of light into active materials, and plasmon near-field will be dominated and can increase the collection performance efficiency. Based on our obtained experiment results of the enhanced optical absorption spectra for single plasmonic structures (AuNPs@TiO2, /a-Si/AuNPs) and dual combined /a-Si/AuNPs/AuNPs@TiO2/ plasmonic structure being in different samples groups, this paper, using a rather new approach, outlines the theoretical aspects and calculation of carriers generation rates in different forms under AM 1.5 irradiation for each mentioned plasmonic structure to reveal the contribution effect of carrier generation rates causing the optical absorption spectra enhancements. The calculated results show the intrinsic relationship between the measured and theoretically calculated results concerning the optical absorption spectra and carrier generation rate enhancements. The carrier generation caused by single AuNPs@TiO2 plasmonic structure is poor, while that caused by the single /a-Si/AuNPs/ plasmonic structure is considerably large, especially the carrier generation process caused by dual combined /a-Si/AuNPs/AuNPs@TiO2/ plasmonic structure is the largest. The obtained results are analyzed and proposed for the potential application in plasmonic solar cells for increasing power conversation efficiency.