Design Considerations for Enhancing Absorption in Semiconductors on Metals with Surface Plasmon Polaritons

Published

March 5, 2014

Author(s)

Christopher C. Bohn, Amit K. Agrawal, Youngmin Lee, Charles J. Choi, Matthew Davis, Paul M. Haney, Henri J. Lezec, Veronika A. Szalai

Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons have attracted attention for energy applications such as photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells because of their ability to improve optical absorption in thin fi lms. We show that surface plasmon polaritons enhance absorption most signifi cantly in materials with small positive real permittivity and large positive imaginary permittivity, e.g. organics or CdTe. Additional losses, accounting for dissipation in the metal and the existence of a cuto ff frequency above which polaritons are no longer bound, are incorporated into efficiency calculations. Owing to these losses, devices with optical absorption based solely on SPPs will necessarily always have a lower efficiency than that predicted by the Shockley-Queisser limit. Calculations are presented for specifi c materials, including crystalline and amorphous Si, GaAs, CdTe, P3HT:PCBM, alpha -Fe2O3 and rutile TiO2, as well as for general materials of arbitrary permittivity. Guidelines for selecting absorber materials and determining whether specifi c materials are good candidates for improving optical absorption with SPPs are presented.

Citation

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics

Volume

16

Issue

13

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

surface plasmon polaritons, semiconductor, absorption, plasmon enhancement

Citation

Bohn, C. , Agrawal, A. , Lee, Y. , Choi, C. , Davis, M. , Haney, P. , Lezec, H. and Szalai, V. (2014), Design Considerations for Enhancing Absorption in Semiconductors on Metals with Surface Plasmon Polaritons, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=915194 (Accessed October 16, 2025)