Mixing plasmonic Au nanoparticles into all polymer layers for improving the efficiency of organic solar cells

Wallace C. H. Choy; Charlie C. D. Wang; Dixon D. S. Fung; Wei E. I. Sha; Feng-Xian Xie

doi:10.1117/12.929495

13 September 2012 Mixing plasmonic Au nanoparticles into all polymer layers for improving the efficiency of organic solar cells

Wallace C. H. Choy, Charlie C. D. Wang, Dixon D. S. Fung, Wei E. I. Sha, Feng-Xian Xie

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8477, Organic Photovoltaics XIII; 847713 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.929495
Event: SPIE Organic Photonics + Electronics, 2012, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

To enhance the light trapping of organic solar cells (OSCs), metallic (e.g. Au, Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) have been incorporated into the polymer layers conveniently in solution process. Although power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSCs has been shown to improve by incorporating metallic NPs in either the buffer layer such as poly-(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) :poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS)[1] or the active layer[2], the understanding on the changes is still not quite clear. Moreover, there are very limited studies on incorporating metallic NPs in more than one organic layer and investigating their effects on the optical and electrical properties as well as the performances of OSCs. In this work, monofunctional poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-capped Au NPs of sizes 18 nm and 35 nm are doped in the PEDOT:PSS and poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT): phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) layers respectively, leading to an improvement of PCE by ~22% compared to the optimized control device. We will firstly identify the impact of NPs in each polymer layer on OSC characteristics by doping Au NPs in either the PEDOT:PSS or P3HT:PCBM layer. Then, we will investigate Au NPs incorporated in all polymer layers. We demonstrate that the accumulated benefits of incorporating Au NPs in all organic layers of OSCs can achieve larger improvements in OSC performances.

Citation Download Citation

Wallace C. H. Choy, Charlie C. D. Wang, Dixon D. S. Fung, Wei E. I. Sha, and Feng-Xian Xie "Mixing plasmonic Au nanoparticles into all polymer layers for improving the efficiency of organic solar cells", Proc. SPIE 8477, Organic Photovoltaics XIII, 847713 (13 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.929495

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