Unrevealing tunable resonant excitons and correlated plasmons and their coupling in new amorphous carbon-like for highly efficient photovoltaic devices

An understanding on roles of excitons and plasmons is important in excitonic solar cells and photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Here, we produce new amorphous carbon (a-C) like films on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) generating PV cells with efficiency three order of magnitude higher than the existing biomass-derived a-C. The amorphous carbon films are prepared from the bioproduct of palmyra sap with a simple, environmentally friendly, and highly reproducible method. Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, we measure simultaneously complex dielectric function, loss function as well as reflectivity and reveal coexistence of many-body resonant excitons and correlated-plasmons occurring due to strong electronic correlations. X-ray absorption and photoemission spectroscopies show the nature of electron and hole in defining the energy of the excitons and plasmons as a function of N or B doping. Our result shows new a-C like films and the importance of the coupling of resonant excitons and correlated plasmons in determining efficiency of photovoltaic devices.

Observation of resonant exciton and correlated plasmon yielding correlated plexciton in amorphous silicon with various hydrogen content

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si: H) has received great attention for rich fundamental physics and potentially inexpensive solar cells. Here, we observe new resonant excitons and correlated plasmons tunable via hydrogen content in a-Si: H films on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) substrate. Spectroscopic ellipsometry supported with High Resolution-Transmission Electron Microscopy (HR-TEM) is used to probe optical properties and the density of electronic states in the various crystallinity from nano-size crystals to amorphous a-Si: H films. The observed optical and electronic structures are analyzed by the second derivative with analytic critical-point line shapes. The complex dielectric function shows good agreement with microscopic calculations for the energy shift and the broadening inter-band transitions based on the electron-hole interaction. Interestingly, we observe an unusual spectral weight transfer over a broad energy range revealing electronic correlations that cause a drastic change in the charge carrier density and determine the photovoltaic performance. Furthermore, the interplay of resonant excitons and correlated plasmons is discussed in term of a correlated plexciton. Our result shows the important role of hydrogen in determining the coupling of excitons and plasmons in a-Si: H film for photovoltaic devices.