Effective medium analysis of thermally evaporated Ag nanoparticle films for plasmonic enhancement in organic solar cell

Abstract

Films of silver nanoparticles have optical properties that are useful for applications such as plasmonic light trapping in solar cells. We report on the simple fabrication of Ag nanoparticle films via thermal evaporation, with and without subsequent annealing. These films result in a random array of particles of various shapes and sizes. The modeling of such a vast collection of particles is still beyond reach of the modern computers. We show that it is possible to represent the silver island films by the Bergman effective mediums with the same optical properties. The effective medium method provides us with deep insight about the shape, the size and the distribution of nanoparticles. The far field simulations of solar cells, in which the silver island film is replaced with an effective medium layer, show a reduction in the absorption of active layer. Besides, the near field simulations based on finite-difference time-domain technique demonstrate that the near field effects on active layer absorption are negligible and this method highlights the importance of nanoparticles shapes. The PCPDTBT:PCBM solar cells with embedded silver island films are fabricated, and it is found that their performances show the similar trend. This insight can be used for the optical analysis of thermally evaporated Ag nanoparticle films for the improvement of organic solar cells.