Plasmonic Effects of Metallic Nanoparticles on Enhancing Performance of Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

We report systematic design and formation of plasmonic perovskite solar cells (PSCs) by integrating Au@TiO core-shell nanoparticles (NPs) into porous TiO and/or perovskite semiconductor capping layers. The plasmonic effects in the formed PSCs are examined. The most efficient configuration is obtained by incorporating Au@TiO NPs into both the porous TiO and the perovskite capping layers, which increases the power conversion efficiency (PCE) from 12.59% to 18.24%, demonstrating over 44% enhancement, compared with the reference device without the metal NPs. The PCE enhancement is mainly attributed to short-circuit current improvement. The plasmonic enhancement effects of Au@TiO core-shell nanosphere photovoltaic composites are explored based on the combination of UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, external quantum efficiency (EQE), photocurrent properties, and photoluminescence (PL). The addition of Au@TiO nanospheres increased the rate of exciton generation and the probability of exciton dissociation, enhancing charge separation/transfer, reducing the recombination rate, and facilitating carrier transport in the device. This study contributes to understanding of plasmonic effects in perovskite solar cells and also provides a promising approach for simultaneous photon energy and electron management.

Effect of Plasmonic Ag Nanoparticles on the Performance of Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells

“…To increase the PCE of PSCs as a result of enhanced optical absorption of the incident light, the incorporation of plasmonic NPs such as (Ag and Au) is a very fascinating approach . A very first report of plasmonic nanostructures incorporated into PSCs was by Snaith and co‐workers in 2013.…”

“…[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] To increase the PCE of PSCs as a result of enhanced optical absorption of the incident light, the incorporation of plasmonic NPs such as (Ag and Au) is a very fascinating approach. [21][22][23] A very first report of plasmonic nanostructures incorporated into PSCs was by Snaith and co-workers in 2013. They used Au@SiO 2 NPs incorporated into mesostructured Al 2 O 3 , causing the PCE to increase from 8.5% to 9.5%.…”

Super absorption of solar energy using a plasmonic nanoparticle based CdTe solar cell

“…Among these techniques, the plasmonic nanoparticle approach is considered to be the best one as it utilizes surface plasmons to enhance the absorption in the active layer of the solar cell. [7][8][9] Recently, it has been found that cadmium telluride (CdTe) is the most promising candidate for the active layer among thin-lm solar cells due to its long-term stability and capability of photon absorption in visible and near infrared region. 10 Furthermore, it is a direct bandgap semiconductor with optical absorption coefficient of 10 5 cm À1 and they are also commercially available.…”

“…A. Araujo et al, 15 worked on increasing light trapping in thin lm solar cells by depositing silver nanoparticles at rear surface of cells thus increasing the absorption up to 90% in light spectrum ranging 450-700 nm. Q. Luo et al, 7 proposed the integration of gold on TiO 2 nanospheres in porous layers of TiO 2 as well as perovskite to increase the power conversion efficiency to 18.24% thus making an improvement of 44% over the reference model. The absorption efficiency was measured for this model in the wavelength ranging from 300 to 800 nm.…”

Enhancing photovoltaic performance of perovskite solar cells with silica nanosphere antireflection coatings

“…These perovskite materials possess some fascinating properties, such as tunable bandgap (Noh et al, 2013), high absorption coefficients (Xing et al, 2013), long charge carrier (electron-hole) diffusion length (Stranks et al, 2013), and low-temperature solution processability (Wang et al, 2014). Over the past few years, numerous efforts and extensive investigations have been made into the morphology control of each functional layer (Haque et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2016), compositional engineering of perovskite materials (Hao et al, 2014;Jeon et al, 2015), device structure design (Burschka et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2012;Gao et al, 2014;Cao and Xue, 2014;Tan et al, 2014;, crystallization modulation of perovskites (Jeon et al, 2014;Xiao et al, 2014;Im et al, 2014) and interfacial engineering (Zhou et al, 2014;Luo et al, 2017;Assadi et al, 2018). Consequently, the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of PSC devices have been boosted from 3.8% to 22.7% under 1 sun conditions (100 mW cm −2 AM 1.5G) (Green et al, 2018).…”