Advanced nanostructured materials and their application for improvement of sun-light harvesting and efficiency of solar cells

This review describes the application of different nanostructured materials in solar cells technology for improvement of sun-light harvesting and their efficiency. Several approaches have recently been proposed to increase the efficiency of solar cells above the theoretical limit which are based on a “photon management” concept that employs such phenomena as: (i) down-conversion, and (ii) surface plasmon resonance effect (iii) decreasing of the loss due to the reflection of the radiation, (iv) increasing of the reflection from the back contact, v) increasing of the effective solar cells surface, etc. The results demonstrate the possibility for to increasing of light harvesting, short circuit current and efficiency by application of nanomaterials in thin film and hetero-junction (HJ) solar cells. The first promising results allow an expectation for application of advanced nanomaterials in the 3^d generation solar cells.