Mitigation of metal-mediated losses by coating Au nanoparticles with dielectric layer in plasmonic solar cells
Mitigation of metal-mediated losses by coating Au nanoparticles with dielectric layer in plasmonic solar cells
复制标题
通过在等离子体太阳能电池中用介电层涂覆金纳米粒子来减轻金属介导的损耗
DOI：
10.1039/c3ra43044h
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发表时间：
2013-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Qiu, Dong
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Huang, Yi-Fan;Zhang, Ze-Ling;Qiu, Dong
先前的研究主要集中在利用金属纳米颗粒（NP）的表面等离子体效应来提高聚合物太阳能电池的性能。尽管充足的例子证明了这种方法的可行性，但通过等离子体金属纳米粒子的固有金属介导的损失来减少器件光电流的不利影响，阻碍了器件效率的进一步提高，却很少被认识到。为了解决这个问题，我们将涂有介电SiO2层的Au NP嵌入聚合物太阳能电池中，试图减少这些金属纳米结构的负面影响，从而提高光伏光电流和效率。我们构建了基于聚（3-己基噻吩）和[6,6]-苯基-C61-丁酸甲酯的倒置聚合物太阳能电池，并将涂有SiO2层的Au纳米粒子（即Au@SiO2核壳纳米结构）混合到有源层中。与嵌入单一Au NPs的等离子体太阳能电池相比，包含Au@SiO2核壳纳米结构的器件确实表现出显着增强的光电流密度，但整体效率并不优越。光电流密度的增加归因于覆盖金纳米粒子的介电层，它减轻了金属介导的损失，例如激子猝灭，可能是由金属表面上的电子积累引起的，但同时该层足够薄，可以在光激发时维持金核的等离子体效应。该研究为利用等离子体纳米结构增强光伏性能的策略提供了新的见解，即必须全面评估等离子体效应和金属介导的损失之间的平衡。
Previous studies have concentrated on harnessing the surface plasmonic effects of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) to improve polymer solar cell performance. Although ample examples have evidenced the viability of this methodology, the adverse effect of device photocurrent reduction via the intrinsic metal-mediated losses of plasmonic metal NPs, which hampers further enhancement of device efficiency, has rarely been recognized. To address this issue, we herein embedded Au NPs coated with a dielectric SiO2 layer into polymer solar cells, attempting to reduce the negative effects of these metallic nanostructures and thus increase photovoltaic photocurrent and efficiency. We constructed inverted polymer solar cells based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester, and blended Au NPs coated with SiO2 layer, i.e. Au@SiO2 core-shell nanostructures into the active layer. Compared with plasmonic solar cells embedded with sole Au NPs, the device incorporating Au@SiO2 core-shell nanostructures indeed exhibited significantly augmented photocurrent density, though not a superior overall efficiency. The photocurrent density increase is attributed to the dielectric layer coating Au NPs, which mitigates metal-mediated losses such as exciton quenching, probably induced by the electron accumulation on the metallic surface, but which meanwhile is thin enough to maintain the plasmonic effects of the gold core upon photoexcitation. The study provides new insights into strategies harnessing plasmonic nanostructures to enhance photovoltaic performance, i.e. the balance between plasmonic effects and metal-mediated losses has to be comprehensively evaluated.