Enhancing the efficiency of solar cells using silver nano particles

Present day solar cell industry is completely dominated by the use of silicon as the active material. Silicon material is used to manufacture solar cells due to its low cost, abundance in nature, non-toxicity, long term stability, and well established technology. Enhancing the efficiency of silicon solar cells by nanoparticles has become a new trend in solar cell technology. Recently a new method for increasing the light absorption has emerged by the use of scattering from noble metal nanoparticles excited at their surface plasmon resonance. An effort is made to fabricate a photovoltaic device of high efficiency with the help of nanoparticles. The efficiency of silicon solar cells are enhanced by coating silver nanoparticles on them. Silver nanoparticles are synthesized by chemical reduction method. XRD, SEM, and FTIR, analyses are performed for the nanoparticles. The silver nanoparticles are coated on silicon solar cells by boil deposition method. The I-V& P-V characteristics, efficiency and the fill factor of solar cells are studied.