Optical and electrical effects of plasmonic nanoparticles in high-efficiency hybrid solar cells

Wei-Fei Fu; Xiaoqiang Chen; Xi Yang; Ling Wang; Ye Shi; Minmin Shi; Han-Ying Li; Alex K.-Y. Jen; Jun-Wu Chen; Yong Cao; Hong-Zheng Chen

doi:10.1039/C3CP52723A

Optical and electrical effects of plasmonic nanoparticles in high-efficiency hybrid solar cells

Wei-Fei Fu,^a Xiaoqiang Chen,^a Xi Yang,^a Ling Wang,^a Ye Shi,^a Minmin Shi,^a Han-Ying Li,^a Alex K.-Y. Jen,^ab Jun-Wu Chen,^c Yong Cao^c and Hong-Zheng Chen*^a

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* Corresponding authors

^a State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, & Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P. R. China
E-mail: hzchen@zju.edu.cn
Fax: +86 571 87953733
Tel: +86 571 87952557

^b Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98198, USA

^c Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials & Devices, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Functional Materials & Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, P. R. China

Abstract

Plasmonics have been proven to be an effective way to harness more incident light to achieve high efficiency in photovoltaic devices. Herein, we explore the possibility that plasmonics can be utilized to enhance light trapping and power conversion efficiency (PCE) for polymer–quantum dot (QD) hybrid solar cells (HSCs). Based on a low band-gap polymer poly[2,6-(4,4-bis-(2-ethylhexyl)-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b;3,4-b′]-dithiophene)-alt-4,7-(2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)] (PCPDTBT) and a CdSe QD bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) system, gold nanoparticles were doped at different locations of the devices. Successfully, an improved PCE of 3.20 ± 0.22% and 3.16 ± 0.15% was achieved by doping the hole transporting layer and the active layer, respectively, which are among the highest values reported for CdSe QD based HSCs. A detailed study of processing, characterization, microscopy, and device fabrication is conducted to understand the underlying mechanism for the enhanced device performance. The success of this work provides a simple and generally applicable approach to enhance light harnessing of polymer–QD hybrid solar cells.

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics

Optical and electrical effects of plasmonic nanoparticles in high-efficiency hybrid solar cells

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