Plasmon-optical and plasmon-electrical effects for improve performances of solar cells

Abstract

Several approaches to enhance the light absorption and carrier extraction of organic optoelectronic devices will be investigated. For the light management, a theoretical and experimental study organic solar cells with multiple metallic nanostructures is presented in this talk. From theoretical study, the physics of the performance enhancement of the organic solar cell is explained by multiphysics model of plasmonic organic solar cells. Meanwhile, we have also experimental investigated the plasmonic-optical and plasmonic-electrical effects with various metallic nanostructures such as metallic nanoparticles and metallic nanogratings into different regions of the solar cells. For the plasmonic-optical effects, we demonstrated the enhancement of light absorption in active layer and thus the improvement of photogenerated current. Regarding the electrical effects due to the incorporation of metal nanostructures, we realize the hot carrier effects and charge storage effects separately and achieve high performance organic optoelectronic devices [1–4]. Recently, we experimentally and theoretically break the intrinsic space-charge limit (SCL) of organic semiconductors by a novel plasmonic-electrical concept [1, 2] Our results show that the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells can be enhanced by over 30% and the value of power conversion efficiency can reach about 9.6% depending on the metallic nanostructures, device structures, and the polymer materials. Details of the improvement will be discussed [1–3].