World Sustainable Energy Forum EnerSol WSEF Tunisia 2014 International Conference Proceeding www.setcor.org/conferences/EnerSol-WSEF-2014 Silver nanoparticles contribution in optical response of MACE silicon nanowires structures R. Benabderrahmane Zaghouani*, S. Aouida, M. Rawefi, N. Bachtouli, B. Bessais. Photovoltaic Laboratory, Research and Technology Centre of Energy, Borj Cedria Science and Technology Park, BP N° 95, 2050 Hammam-Lif, Tunisia *Corresponding author. Dr. Rabia Benabderrahmane Zaghouani Tel.:+21654154428; fax: +21679325825 E-mail address:
[email protected] Abstract This work focuses on optical characterization of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) used for photovoltaic applications. We report on the elaboration of SiNWs by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching technique (MACE) technique using silver (Ag) as metal catalyst. The obtained results show that the SiNWs optical properties are sensitive to their elaboration conditions specially the cleaning protocol. The comparison between samples with different cleaning protocol shows that, in the UV spectral region, SiNWs more contaminated with Ag nanoparticles (Ag-Nps) present a pronounced decrease of the reflectivity. This optical behavior was attributed to metallic nanoparticles persisting in the silicon nanowires structures presenting surface plasmon resonance energy in a vicinity of UV spectral region. Keywords: SiNWs, MACE, Reflectivity, Silver nanoparticles, Surface Plasmon resonance. 1. Introduction Silicon-based solar cells remain the main candidate in photovoltaic