Investigation of Euler spiral nanoantenna and its application in absorption enhancement of thin film solar cell

A theoretical study on nanoantenna and its application in enhancing the performance of the thin film solar cell (TFSC) is presented. In this work, a novel design of nanoantenna i.e. Euler spiral nanoantenna (ESNA) is introduced, which has evolved after bending the conventional dipole nanoantenna in the manner of Euler spiral. The bending is performed up to an optimum length so that the antenna can equally respond to the two orthogonally polarized waves. Then the proposed nanoantenna in turnstile manner is examined for the intended application of enhancing the absorption in TFSCs. The antenna is placed on the absorber layer (Si amorphous) of the TFSC with a coating of Zinc Oxide. The simulation results show that the proposed ESNA can significantly increase the absorption in the absorber layer of the TFSC. The performance in terms of absorption and quantum efficiency of the solar cell incorporated with ESNA has been studied. ESNA confines the electric field in a larger area which results in absorption increase. The simulation results show that proposed ESNA can enhance the absorption up to 97.6% in the absorber layer and the photocurrent is enhanced by a factor of 1.39. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on Euler spiral nanoantenna and so as in its application with solar cells.