Grating-coupled surface plasmon resonance enhanced organic photovoltaic devices induced by Blu-ray disc recordable and Blu-ray disc grating structures

Nootchanat, Supeera; Pangdam, Apichat; Ishikawa, Ryousuke; Wongravee, Kanet; Shinbo, Kazunari; Kato, Keizo; Kaneko, Futao; Ekgasit, Sanong; Baba, Akira

doi:10.1039/c6nr09951c

Cited by 32 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The extracted PCE and J SC values are shown as a function of ODT content in Figure b. The values without ODT match commonly achieved PCE values for not fully optimized device architectures (e.g., no antireflection coating) . A gradual improvement in PCE with increasing ODT content is observed, which is mainly ascribed to the positive development of J SC .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 54%

Influence of Solvent Additive 1,8‐Octanedithiol on P3HT:PCBM Solar Cells

Wang

Song

Magerl

et al. 2018

Adv Funct Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Processing solvent additives in polymer:fullerene bulk heterojunction systems are known as a promising method to enhance photovoltaic performance. It is generally agreed that solvent additives enable polymers to have a high degree of molecular order which increases the device performance. However, the understanding of the efficiency enhancement is not complete. There is a lack of insight regarding the quantitative determination of the molecular miscibility between polymer and fullerene as well as the inner morphology changes induced by the additives. In this work, understanding of the influence of the solvent additive 1,8-octanedithiol (ODT) is provided on the classic system poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl):[6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) films. The impact on polymer crystallinity, surface structure, inner morphology, and quantitative molecular miscibility of P3HT and PCBM is studied as a function of ODT volume concentration. The crystallinity is probed with absorption spectroscopy and grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering. The morphology and miscibility are characterized via atomic force microscopy and time-of-flight grazing incidence small angle neutron scattering. Besides an increased crystallinity and prominent phase separation, ODT increases the solubility of PCBM in P3HT and reduces the size of amorphous P3HT domains. Moreover, solvent processing with a high ODT concentration alters the vertical material composition of the active layer.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 54%

Influence of Solvent Additive 1,8‐Octanedithiol on P3HT:PCBM Solar Cells

Wang

Song

Magerl

et al. 2018

Adv Funct Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A more recent example of this is the demonstration of Blu‐ray discs as a mold for imprinting. It was demonstrated that that higher enhancements are achieved with a bare, unrecorded disc, as compared to a recorded disc with quasi‐random structures …”

Section: Patterned Structures For Optical In‐couplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical In‐Coupling in Organic Solar Cells

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

thus offering an environmentally friendly approach. Furthermore, the use of simple low-temperature processing techniques makes it a potentially low-cost technology. However, efficiency and stability are so far lacking, hampering the full exploitation of the potential this technology has in these new applications. After the demonstration of the first reasonably performing organic solar cell by Tang [1] achieving approximately 1% efficiency, much effort has been put into improving these values. Nowadays, efficiencies well beyond 10%, and even over 13% have been reached, [2,3] however, with hard-to-synthesize polymers that so far have not shown sufficient stability for practical applications.Closer to commercial exploitation, solar cells based on oligomers (also termed "small molecules") and the material class used by Tang et al. [1] are investigated and introduced in their pioneering papers. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] This material class can be either deposited by vacuum evaporation or solution processing. [16][17][18][19][20][21] The advantage of vacuum evaporation is that very pure layers without solvent residuals are produced, which is favorable for a higher stability of the cells. Also, they allow several cells to be very easily integrated into stacked multijunction devices. [22] With multijunction cells, Heliatek has reached an efficiency of 13.2% using proprietary materials that allow long lifetimes and can be readily manufactured. [23] Single-junction devices with similar published materials achieve above 8% efficiency [24] and above 10% in single-junction and tandem devices, respectively. [25] While these values are much improved as compared to the pioneering work of Tang, there is still a large gap to be closed to reach efficiencies comparable to silicon solar cells and other inorganic PV technologies.Here, first we will address limitations of organic solar cells, such as short exciton diffusion length, voltage, and transport problems. After that, various approaches to solve these challenges will be introduced. These include the bulk heterojunction, multijunction devices, and periodically patterned structures on substrates or active layers. Among these approaches, we focus on optical in-coupling, which allows more photons to be funneled into the thin organic active layers, yielding higher efficiencies. Limitations of Organic Solar CellsAlthough organic solar cells have huge potential and acceptable power conversion efficiencies (PCEs), they still have limitations caused by a short exciton diffusion length, charge transport, and low open-circuit voltage (V oc ). In this section, we briefly summarize why OSCs lack in efficiency, and optical in-coupling is required to improve the performance.Organic photovoltaics have many unique properties, such as flexibility, transparency, and low weight, which allows novel applications to be addressed. A remaining challenge is to increase the power conversion efficiencies into the range that is offered by conventional inorganic photovoltaics. Due to the li...

show abstract

“…It permits the control of the chemistry, patterning of large areas, and scalable production of patterned surfaces. Hence, to improve solar-cell performances, this NIL process has been recently employed for the formation of an irregular nanoscale-featured surface by using nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane filters 20 , the formation of ordered nano/microstructures by using a large-scale nanoporous Si mold and AAO templates 21,22 , and the formation of a grating structure by Blu-ray movie discs (BD) and Blu-ray disc-recordable (BD-R) 23,24 . The latter involves the plasmonic effect at the patterned metallic electrodes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced organic solar cell performance: Multiple surface plasmon resonance and incorporation of silver nanodisks into a grating-structure electrode

Putnin

Lertvachirapaiboon

Ishikawa

et al. 2019

Opto-Electronic Advances

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, plasmonic nanostructures were examined to enhance the light harvesting of organic thin-film solar cells (OSCs) by multiple surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomena originating from the grating-coupled configuration with a Blu-ray Disc recordable (BD-R)-imprinted aluminum (Al) grating structure and the incorporation of a series of silver nanodisks (Ag NDs). The devices with such a configuration maximize the light utilization inside OSCs via light absorption, light scattering, and trapping via multiple surface plasmon resonances. Different types and sizes of metallic nanoparticles (NPs), i.e., gold nanoparticles (Au NPs), Ag nanospheres (Ag NSs), and Ag NDs, were used, which were blended separately in a PEDOT:PSS hole transport layer (HTL). The device structure comprised of grating-imprinted-Al/P3HT:PCBM/Ag ND:PEDOT:PSS/ITO. Results obtained from the J-V curves revealed that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of grating-structured Al/P3HT:PCBM/PEDOT:PSS/ITO is 3.16%; this value is ~6% higher than that of a flat substrate. On the other hand, devices with flat Al and incorporated Au NPs, Ag NSs, or Ag NDs in the HTL exhibited PCEs ranging from 3.15% to 3.37%. Furthermore, OSCs with an Al grating substrate were developed by the incorporation of the Ag ND series into the PEDOT:PSS layer. Compared with that of a reference device, the PCEs of the devices increased to 3.32%-3.59% (11%-20% improvement), indicating that the light absorption enhancement at the active layer corresponds to the grating-coupled surface plasmon resonance and localized surface plasmon resonance excitations with strong near-field distributions penetrating into the active layer leading to higher efficiencies and subsequent better current generation.

show abstract

Grating-coupled surface plasmon resonance enhanced organic photovoltaic devices induced by Blu-ray disc recordable and Blu-ray disc grating structures

Cited by 32 publications

References 39 publications

Influence of Solvent Additive 1,8‐Octanedithiol on P3HT:PCBM Solar Cells

Influence of Solvent Additive 1,8‐Octanedithiol on P3HT:PCBM Solar Cells

Optical In‐Coupling in Organic Solar Cells

Enhanced organic solar cell performance: Multiple surface plasmon resonance and incorporation of silver nanodisks into a grating-structure electrode

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About