Plasmon enhanced performance of organic solar cells using electrodeposited Ag nanoparticles

To enhance solar harvesting in organic solar cells, uniform-sized metal nanoparticles of similar to 13 nm were incorporated to the device via pulse-current electrodeposition, which is a kind of simple and quick solution process that can control the density and size of metal nanoparticles. By incorporating plasmonic Ag nanoparticles on surface modified transparent electrodes, overall power conversion efficiency was increased from 3.05% to 3.69%, mainly resulting from the improved photocurrent density as a result of enhanced absorption of the photoactive conjugate polymer due to the high electromagnetic field strength in the vicinity of the excited surface plasmons. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.