The improved performance of BHJ organic solar cells by random dispersed metal nanoparticles through the active layer

In this paper, the performance of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells (OSCs) in the presence of random dispersed Ag nanoparticles (NPs) into the active layer is investigated. By the well-known Maxwell-Garnett effective medium theory, we have analyzed the optical absorption of P3HT:PCBM and PCDTBT:PCBM photoactive blends when spherical Ag NPs are randomly embedded in them. The photocurrent enhancement of OSCs based on the blend:AgNP composites has been examined by an analytical drift-diffusion method. Our theoretical analysis demonstrates a considerable enhancement in the optical absorption of the blends with Ag NPs resulted in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) improvement of the devices up to 65.6% in comparison with the reference blends. In addition, the spectrally correlation of simulated external quantum efficiency (EQE) and the absorption coefficient enhancements proves the influence of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of the Ag NPs in boosting the performance of the OSC devices.