Electrical and optical properties of hybrid polymer solar cells incorporating Au and CuO nanoparticles

• Main Authors: Aruna P. Wanninayake, Shengyi Li, Benjamin C. Church, Nidal Abu-Zahra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIMS Press 2015-12-01
• Series: AIMS Materials Science
• Subjects: Au nanoparticles; CuO nanoparticles; plasmonic effect; UV-visible spectroscopy; PSCs
• Online Access: http://www.aimspress.com/Materials/article/584/fulltext.html

In this study, to enhance the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the polymer solar cells (PSCs), Gold (Au) and Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO-NPs) are incorporated into the PEDOT:PSS and P3HT/PCBM active layers respectively. PSCs with a constant CuO-NP content were fabricated with varying amounts of Au NPs. Addition of Au NPs increased the power conversion efficiency by up to 18% compared to a reference cell without Au-NPs. The short circuit current(<em>J</em>_sc) of the cells containing 0.06 mg of Au NPs was measured at 7.491 mA/cm² compared to 6.484 mA/cm² in the reference cells with 0.6 mg of CuO nanoparticles; meanwhile, the external quantum efficiency(EQE) increased from 53% to 61%, showing an enhancement of 15.1%. Au-NPs improved the charge collection at the anode, which results in higher short circuit current and fill factor. However, the strong near field surrounding Au-NPs due to localized surface plasmonic resonance (LSPR) effect is not distributed into the active layer. Instead, it is spread horizontally through the PEDOT:PSS layer, thus minimizing the light absorption in the active layer.