Evidence of plasmonic effects in random orientation silver nanowire meshes on silicon

In this work silver nanowires were used as the transparent conductive electrode on a crystalline silicon solar cell in place of the commonly used screen printed grid. Light transmission and surface characterisation of the cells displays an average of 22% more light transmission than the physical non-AgNW shaded area of the cell surface. Further to this it is observed that plasmonic effects result in an increased scattering of incoming light into the cell, which also reduced the amount of light reflected from the cell’s front plane. The cells with silver nanowire electrodes did not, however, show improved current–voltage characteristics compared to cells without a front electrode. This is attributed to the overall low light transmission as a result of silver nanoparticles present in the electrodes and poor electrical connection between silicon cell and electrode. Finally, a large reduction in the mass of silver used for the nanowire electrodes was observed when compared to standard screen printed grid fingers.