Plasmonic organic bulk-heterojunction solar cells based on hydrophobic gold nanorod insertion into active layers

In this work, we fabricated plasmonic organic bulk-heterojunction solar cells by inserting hydrophobic gold nanorods (GNRs) into the active layers. Power conversion efficiency was improved from 7.43% to 8.22% because the plasmonic effect of GNRs improved the light harvesting efficiency. Maximum exciton generation rate was increased from 1.35 x 10(-26) to 1.51 x 10(-26) m(-3) s(-1), and the electron mobility was also increased from 8.6 x 10(-5) to 1.53 x 10(-4) cm(-2) V-1 s(-1). As a result, the short circuit current density was improved from 15.5 to 16.7 mA cm(-2) the dominant reason for performance enhancement. The open circuit voltage and fill factor were improved simultaneously. The plasmonic device showed a highest PCE of 8.43%, indicating that doping GNRs into active layers is a simple and effective way to fabricate high-performance organic solar cells. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.