Issue 3, 2012
From the journal:

Journal of Materials Chemistry

Optical and electrical effects of gold nanoparticles in the active layer of polymer solar cells†

Charlie C. D. Wang,a   Wallace C. H. Choy,*a   Chunhui Duan,b   Dixon D. S. Fung,a   Wei E. I. Sha,a   Feng-Xian Xie,a   Fei Huang*b  and  Yong Caob  

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
E-mail: chchoy@eee.hku.hk
Fax: +86 852-2559-8738
Tel: +86 852-2857-8485

b Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials & Devices, State Key Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry of Luminescence, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, P. R. China
E-mail: msfhuang@scut.edu.cn
Tel: +86-20-8711-4346

Abstract

The effects of Au nanoparticles (NPs) incorporated into the active layer of polymer solar cells (PSCs) with a newly synthesized donor polymer are investigated in detail. Our work shows that localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) introduced by the metallic NPs can experimentally and theoretically enhance the light absorption in the active layer of PSCs because the strong LSPR near field mainly distributes laterally along the active layer. The understanding can be applied to other metallic NP incorporated organic solar cells. Meanwhile, our results show that electrical properties can counter-diminish the optical enhancement from LSPR and thus reduce the overall performance improvement. It is important that both optical and electrical properties need to be studied and optimized simultaneously for achieving improved power conversion efficiency. The study contributes to better understanding the uses of Au NPs for enhancing PSC performances.

Graphical abstract: Optical and electrical effects of gold nanoparticles in the active layer of polymer solar cells

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1JM14150C
Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Aug 2011
Accepted
19 Oct 2011
First published
18 Nov 2011

J. Mater. Chem., 2012,22, 1206-1211

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Optical and electrical effects of gold nanoparticles in the active layer of polymer solar cells

C. C. D. Wang, W. C. H. Choy, C. Duan, D. D. S. Fung, W. E. I. Sha, F. Xie, F. Huang and Y. Cao, J. Mater. Chem., 2012, 22, 1206 DOI: 10.1039/C1JM14150C

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