Tahmineh Jalali

Embeddingplasmonicnanoparticles(p-NPs)insidethesolarcell’sactivelayeriscapableofenhancingactivelayer 13 optical absorption; however, such inclusion has some detrimental effects on the electronic properties of the solar 14 cells. In addition, p-NPs are highly catalytic, their presence enables other non-radiative decay channels besides 15 generation of electron–hole pairs, and the electrons usually get absorbed by these p-NPs. This results in the 16 unfavorable fact that the potential enhancement in the carrier generation rate and the generated current is 17 no more in line with the enhancement in the optical absorption. In this paper, we propose to functionalize 18 p-NPs by adding a dielectric or semiconductor shell, to passivate the p-NP without deteriorating scattering 19 and/or plasmonic effects. Ag@SiO2 and Ag@TiO2 core–shell p-NPs have been intensely studied using extensive 20 computational electromagnetic simulations to model the spectral response of the active layer’s optical absorption 21 aswellaselectronicpropertiesasafunctionofbothshellcompositionandthickness.Itisshownthata5nmTiO2 22 shellisapttoopticallypassivate thep-NPwithoutanyreductioninopticalabsorption,whileimprovingtheshort 23 circuit current density (Jsc) of the thin-film solar cell by 33.3%.