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

Aruna P. Wanninayake; Shengyi Li; Benjamin C. Church; Nidal Abu-Zahra; Aruna P. Wanninayake; Shengyi Li; Benjamin C. Church; Nidal Abu-Zahra

doi:10.3934/matersci.2016.1.35

AIMS Materials Science

2016, Volume 3, Issue 1: 35-50. doi: 10.3934/matersci.2016.1.35

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

Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3200 North Cramer Street, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA

Received: 20 August 2015 Accepted: 24 December 2015 Published: 29 December 2015

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(J_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.
- Au nanoparticles,
- CuO nanoparticles,
- plasmonic effect,
- UV-visible spectroscopy,
- PSCs
Citation: Aruna P. Wanninayake, Shengyi Li, Benjamin C. Church, Nidal Abu-Zahra. Electrical and optical properties of hybrid polymer solar cells incorporating Au and CuO nanoparticles[J]. AIMS Materials Science, 2016, 3(1): 35-50. doi: 10.3934/matersci.2016.1.35

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Abstract

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(J_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.

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