Abstract
Well-engineered light trapping designs will significantly improve power conversion efficiency of thin-film organic solar cells. Recently, metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have been widely used to concentrate sunlight in the active layer of OSCs. To critically examine the influence of geometry of metallic NPs on absorption of OSCs, the parallel finite-element method is applied to simulate the near-field multiple scattering effects in plasmonic NPs incorporated OSCs. The geometry-varied NPs including nano-cone, nano-inverted-cone, nano-cylinder, and nano-cuboid are systematically investigated. Furthermore, the absorption enhancement from the dielectric silicon NPs and perfectly reflecting NPs are also comprehensively offered. Compared to the off-plasmon resonance case, the absorption enhancement factor is higher for on-plasmon resonance case. However, the absorption of organic active material near plasmon resonance weakly contributes to exciton generation. Moreover, the height-dependent Fabry-Perot mode plays a key role in the light trapping off the plasmon resonance. Additionally, the tapered structure of the silver nano-cone, which leads to the best absorption enhancement of 3 at the wavelength of 680 nm, since it can reduce unwanted reflection loss and achieve broadband plasmonic resonance simultaneously.
Highlights
Thin-film organic solar cells(OSCs) have a great potential to generate electrical energy as a renewable energy source [1], [2]
2π h nr (λ), ki(λ)ε0|E(r, λ)|2 (λ)d λ where λ is the incident wavelength, EAg represents the electric field at the active layer when the Ag NPs are embedded in active layer, E donates the electric field at the active layer without Ag NPs, h is the Planck constant, nc = nr + iki is the complex refractive index of the active material, as shown in figure 2
The common material of P3HT:PCBM is commercially available for active layer due to the complexity of the polymer chemistry, materials science, device engineering, and device physics involved [3]
Summary
Thin-film organic solar cells(OSCs) have a great potential to generate electrical energy as a renewable energy source [1], [2]. The absorption of OSCs have been enhanced [4] by metallic nanoparticles (NPs), which excite localized plasmonic resonances (LPRs) [5] and trap the light at the active layer [6], [7]. All the previous results and conclusions did not separate the contribution of plasmon resonance with other resonance mechanisms for boosting optical absorption of OSCs. The absorption enhancement comparisons between different geometries and materials have not been examined critically to unveil wave physics to achieve state-of-the-art light-trapping design based on NPs. On the other hand, more efficient full-wave numerical solution to the optical response of high-performance photovoltaics are urgently required. The Floquet boundary condition is utilized to model the OSC device, where the distance between NPS are well separated to avoid degrading electrical properties of devices In this way, only a unit cell needs to be calculated and the computational resources can be significantly saved.
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