Electrical and Optical Performance Evaluation of Plasmonic Nanoparticle-Based Organic Photovoltaic Cells

Nanoparticle (NP)-based Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) cells have the potential to increase power conversion efficiency (PCE) due to the capacity to excite localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) induced by conductive electron oscillation. Widespread deployment of this technology requires further investigation to find out the most dominant parameters (both optical and electrical) responsible for improving the PCE of NP-based OPV cells. In this work, we primarily investigated the performance of plasmonic NPs (e.g., Ag and Au) based OPV cells using the General-Purpose Photovoltaic Device Model (GPVDM) and Semiconducting Thin Film Optics Simulation (SETFOS) environments and compare them to a reference cell without any NPs. It was discovered that by using the NPs as a distinctive active layer along with P3HT: PCBM, both carrier generation rate, and electric field were significantly enhanced in single-junction OPV cells. Thus, the PCE was increased by 19.5, and 7.35% for Au and Ag NPs-based OPV systems, respectively. This significant increase in PCE can be explained by increased short-circuit current density as a result of enhancing active layer absorption by LSPRs. This analysis will be helpful for basic understating of NP-based OPV cells and optimizing design parameters for realizing highly efficient OPV cells.