High Performance Polymer Solar Cells Using Grating Nanostructure and Plasmonic Nanoparticles

This work introduces a high-efficiency organic solar cell with grating nanostructure in both hole and electron transport layers and plasmonic gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) distributed on the zinc oxide (ZnO) layer. The periods of the grating structure in both hole and electro transport layers were optimized using Lumerical finite difference time domain (FDTD) solution software. The optimum AuNP radius distributed on the ZnO layer was also simulated and analyzed before studying the effect of changing the temperature on the solar cell performance, fill factor, and power conversion efficiency. In addition, optical and electrical models were used to calculate the short circuit current density, fill factor, and overall efficiency of the produced polymer solar cell nanostructure. The maximum obtained short circuit current density and efficiency of the solar cell were 18.11 mA/cm² and 9.46%, respectively, which gives a high light absorption in the visible region. Furthermore, the effect of light polarization for incident light angles from θ = 0° to 70° with step angle 10° on the electrical and optical parameters were also studied. Finally, optical power, electric field, and magnetic field distribution inside the nanostructure are also illustrated.