Plasmonic Nanostructure for Enhanced Light Absorption in Ultrathin Silicon Solar Cells

The performances of thin film solar cells are considerably limited by the low light absorption. Plasmonic nanostructures have been introduced in the thin film solar cells as a possible solution around this issue in recent years. Here, we propose a solar cell design, in which an ultrathin Si film covered by a periodic array of Ag strips is placed on a metallic nanograting substrate. The simulation results demonstrate that the designed structure gives rise to 170% light absorption enhancement over the full solar spectrum with respect to the bared Si thin film. The excited multiple resonant modes, including optical waveguide modes within the Si layer, localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of Ag stripes, and surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) arising from the bottom grating, and the coupling effect between LSPR and SPP modes through an optimization of the array periods are considered to contribute to the significant absorption enhancement. This plasmonic solar cell design paves a promising way to increase light absorption for thin film solar cell applications

Enhanced Rate of Enzymatic Saccharification with the Ionic Liquid Treatment of Corn Straw Activated by Metal Ion Solution

The aim of this paper was to effectively reduce environmental pollution and further improve the enzymatic hydrolysis rate of corn straw. Thus, a pretreatment method for activating cellulose by using ionic liquid to treat metal ion solution was developed. By investigating the effects of the three factors of substrate mass fraction, reaction temperature, and reaction time, and the interaction between the factors on the pretreatment effect, the response surface design method was used to optimize the conditions of ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride) treatment of corn straw after activation, and the physicochemical structure and enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency before and after treatment were compared and analyzed. The experimental results showed that the yield of reducing sugar was increased by 157.85% and 150.41%, respectively, compared with the untreated corn straw. The analysis of chemical composition and structure showed that the cellulose content of the material increased significantly by 68.11% and 60.54%, respectively, after ionic liquid treatment. The results of the scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation and X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that the relative crystallinity of the material decreased after ionic liquid treatment, which was more conducive to the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose