Modeling of Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells using Core-Shell Metallic Nanoparticles

Abstract

This work investigates the contribution of different shell coating materials for silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) plasmonic on the overall performance of organic solar cells (OSC). Additionally, this work evaluates the optimum shell thickness for power conversion efficiency (PCE). The results show that the use of bare AgNPs increases the PCE of PTB7:PC70BM active layer from 7.6% to 7.79%. The PCE has a significant increase with the use of shell coating materials, and it reaches 8.1% and 8.03% for Silicon oxide (SiO2) and Titanium dioxide (TiO2), respectively. Also, this work suggests the use of Lithium Fluoride (LiF) and Magnesium Fluoride (MgF2) as coating material for AgNPs. The PCE reaches 8.15% and 8.13% for these two materials, respectively. Moreover, the results show that the optimum coating thickness is around 4 nm for most of the coating materials.