IP: 193.32.95.196 On: Tue, 16 Oct 2018 06:27:21 Copyright: American Scientific Publishers Delivered by Ingenta Copyright © 2018 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Article Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Vol. 18, 7739–7748, 2018 www.aspbs.com/jnn Substrates Dependent Low Temperature Fabrication of Silver Nanoparticles Using Rapid Thermal Annealing for Light Trapping Application Bidyut Barman 1 , Hrishikesh Dhasmana 1 ∗ , Abhishek Verma 1 , Amit Kumar 1 , D. N. Singh 2 , and V. K. Jain 1 1 Amity Institute for Advanced Research and Studies (Materials and Devices) and Amity Institute of Renewable and Alternative Energy, Amity University, Noida 201303, Uttar Pradesh, India 2 Indosolar Limited, No. 3C/1, Udyog Vihar, EcoTech-II, Greater Noida, 201306, India This work presents a comparative study of low temperature fabrication of silver (Ag) nanoparti- cles (NPs) by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) of non-continuous Ag film onto various substrates such as glass, polished single-crystalline silicon (c-Si) and poly-crystalline silicon (pc-Si) with supporting growth mechanism. The RTA treatment for various time durations (5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes) of Ag film has resulted into formation of uniformly distributed Ag NPs. The scanning electron micro- scope (SEM) measurements confirm variation in average particle size of Ag NPs for various RTA durations and show minimum particle size behavior profile irrespective of substrate surfaces. The so formed Ag NPs on glass substrates exhibit plasmonic peaks in the range of 415–435 nm. The atomic force microscope (AFM) measurement confirms prolate shape, least surface coverage area of substrate and minimal average particle size of Ag NPs to be suitable for maximizing reflection reduction of Si surface. The 20 minutes RTA treatment of non-continuous Ag film onto both c-Si and pc-Si substrate has led average reflectance reduction from 39.15% and 34.97% to 6.29% and 23.02%, respectively in 300–1100 nm wavelength region. An optimized integration of Ag NPs on Si surface can be useful for light trapping and hence can increase efficiency of Si solar cell by reflectance reduction via photocurrent increment. Keywords: Silver Nanoparticles, Rapid Thermal Annealing, Substrate Surface, Surface Plasmon Resonance, Reflectance Reduction. 1. INTRODUCTION In recent times, an extensive work has been performed on fabrication, characterization and analysis of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) which exhibit localized surface plas- monic behavior. 1 2 Metal NPs upon exposure to the light, interact with the incident radiation at a specific wave- length near to plasmon resonance frequency of NPs. The free conduction electrons of metal NPs at the surface start oscillating and thus create enormous rise in amplitude of plasmonic wave. If the NPs are positioned in immediacy to a high refractive indexed substrate such as silicon, it helps in strong scattering and absorption of light. 3 The resonant wavelength of metal NPs can be tuned by vary- ing their sizes, shapes, surrounding dielectric medium and density of the material. 2 Amongst various metal NPs, the ∗ Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. plasmonic behavior of silver (Ag) NPs show greater per- formances (low absorbance loss, higher scattering cross section and low cost) that has surpassed those of alter- native metal NPs like gold. 4 The growth of Ag NPs on substrate surface depends on surface properties. The sub- strate plays a vital role in any heteroepitaxial thin film growth. The mismatching of lattice and thermal properties between substrate and the film leads to the development of stress in thin film which ultimately contributes in forming the final shape and size of the Ag NPs. 5 Recently, various research groups have reported Ag NPs fabrication by annealing of as sputtered or thermal evap- orated silver film. 6–8 These groups attributed Ag NPs for- mation to solid state dewetting process in which annealing needs to be done at higher temperature (>500  C). But Ag NPs formation at higher substrate temperature deterio- rate other parameters such as junction depth and introduces J. Nanosci. Nanotechnol. 2018, Vol. 18, No. 11 1533-4880/2018/18/7739/010 doi:10.1166/jnn.2018.15551 7739