Application of plasmonic coloring for making building integrated PV modules comprising of green solar cells

When dealing with building integrated photovoltaics aesthetical aspects have to be considered. In particular for façade integrated modules with crystalline Silicon (c-Si) solar cells alternative colors are demanded. In this paper an approach for tuning the color of standard c-Si solar cells is presented relying on plasmonic coloring. Metallic (Ag) nano-particles with a diameter of around 100 nm were created on the surface of standard c-Si solar cells. At those nano-particles plasmonic scattering at around 450 to 550 nm causes a color change from blue to green. The green color is resulting from plasmonic scattering and it is found to be insensitive to the angle of observation. A performance analysis of the c-Si cells before and after coating shows that the power of the cells is decreased by less than 10% when applying the plasmonic coating. A first test module comprising of plasmonic-green c-Si cells was carefully characterized and mounted at a test façade for building integrated modules in order to generate data in the targeted field of application. First results of the test module demonstrate that plasmonic coloring is a feasible approach to tune the color of standard c-Si solar cells for being applied in building integrated photovoltaics.