TY - JOUR
T1 - Ultrathin organic bulk heterojunction solar cells
T2 - Plasmon enhanced performance using Au nanoparticles
AU - Shahin, Shiva
AU - Gangopadhyay, Palash
AU - Norwood, Robert A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported as part of the Center for Interface Science: Solar Electric Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0001804. The authors are thankful to Byron Cocilovo for helping with characterization of the OPV structures. The authors are also grateful to the reviewers whose comments helped us improve the quality of this paper.
PY - 2012/7/30
Y1 - 2012/7/30
N2 - The plasmonic effect of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) enhances light absorption and, thus, the efficiency of organic bulk heterojunction solar cells with poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT): [6,6]-phenyl-C 61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as active layer. We report optimization of this enhancement by varying the attachment density of the self-assembled AuNPs on silanized ITO using N 1-(3-trimethoxysilylpropyl)diethylenetriamine. Using finite difference time domain simulations, the thicknesses of poly (3,4- ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT): poly (styrenesulfonate) (PSS) and P3HT:PCBM layers were suitably varied to ensure broadband optical absorption enhancement and minimal exciton quenching within the active layer. Our experimental results demonstrate that for solar cell structures with 20 surface coverage, absorption is increased by 65 as predicted by simulations. Further, we show that AuNPs increase the efficiency by 30 and that silanization of ITO positively impacts device performance.
AB - The plasmonic effect of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) enhances light absorption and, thus, the efficiency of organic bulk heterojunction solar cells with poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT): [6,6]-phenyl-C 61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as active layer. We report optimization of this enhancement by varying the attachment density of the self-assembled AuNPs on silanized ITO using N 1-(3-trimethoxysilylpropyl)diethylenetriamine. Using finite difference time domain simulations, the thicknesses of poly (3,4- ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT): poly (styrenesulfonate) (PSS) and P3HT:PCBM layers were suitably varied to ensure broadband optical absorption enhancement and minimal exciton quenching within the active layer. Our experimental results demonstrate that for solar cell structures with 20 surface coverage, absorption is increased by 65 as predicted by simulations. Further, we show that AuNPs increase the efficiency by 30 and that silanization of ITO positively impacts device performance.
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U2 - 10.1063/1.4739519
DO - 10.1063/1.4739519
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84864722005
VL - 101
JO - Applied Physics Letters
JF - Applied Physics Letters
SN - 0003-6951
IS - 5
M1 - 053109
ER -