Morphology-dependent light trapping in thin-film organic solar cells

Optics Express

Volumn 21, Issue 105, 2013, Pages A847-A863

  Grote, Richard R ^a   Brown, Steven J ^b   Driscoll, Jeffrey B ^a   Osgood, Richard M ^a   Schuller, Jon A ^a,b  

^a Columbia University ^*  (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABSORPTION ENHANCEMENT; CELL ARCHITECTURES; FIELD COMPONENTS; FIELD ENHANCEMENT; NUMERICAL CALCULATION; ORGANIC PHOTOVOLTAIC (OPV); ORGANIC SOLAR CELL; SOLAR CELL DESIGN;

ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES; MORPHOLOGY; OPTICAL ANISOTROPY; SOLAR CELLS;

NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS;

EID: 84884565301     PISSN: None     EISSN: 10944087     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1364/OE.21.00A847     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. A. C. Mayer, S. R. Scully, B. E. Hardin, M. W. Rowell, and M. D. McGehee, “Polymer-based solar cells,” Mater. Today 10, 28-33 (2007).
2. P. Peumans, V. Bulovic, and S. R. Forrest, “Efficient photon harvesting at high optical intensities in ultrathin organic double-heterostructure photovoltaic diodes,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 76, 2650-2652 (2000).
3. B. O’Connor, K. H. An, K. P. Pipe, Y. Zhao, and M. Shtein, “Enhanced optical field intensity distribution in organic photovoltaic devices using external coatings,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 233502 (2006).
4. F.-C. Chen, J.-L. Wu, C.-L. Lee, Y. Hong, C.-H. Kuo, and M. H. Huang, “Plasmonic-enhanced polymer photovoltaic devices incorporating solution-processable metal nanoparticles,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 013305 (2009).
5. D. M. O’Carroll, C. E. Hofmann, and H. A. Atwater, “Conjugated polymer/metal nanowire heterostructure plas-monic antennas,” Adv. Mater. 22, 1223-1227 (2010).
6. H. A. Atwater and A. Polman, “Plasmonics for improved photovoltaic devices,” Nature Mater. 9, 205-213 (2010).
7. Z. Yu, A. Raman, and S. Fan, “Fundamental limit of nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107, 17491-17496 (2010).
8. D.-H. Ko, J. R. Tumbleston, A. Gadisa, M. Aryal, Y. Liu, R. Lopez, and E. T. Samulski, “Light-trapping nanostructures in organic photovoltaic cells,” J. Mater. Chem. 21, 16293-16303 (2011).
9. K. S. Nalwa, J.-M. Park, K.-M. Ho, and S. Chaudhary, “On realizing higher efficiency polymer solar cells using a textured substrate platform,” Adv. Mater. 23, 112-116 (2011).
10. D. M. Callahan, J. N. Munday, and H. A. Atwater, “Solar cell light trapping beyond the ray optic limit,” Nano Lett. 12, 214-218 (2012).
11. D. M. O’Carroll, J. S. Fakonas, D. M. Callahan, M. Schierhorn, and H. A. Atwater, “Metal-polymer-metal splitdipole nanoantennas,” Adv. Mater. 24, OP136-OP142 (2012).
12. T. Z. Oo, N. Mathews, G. Xing, B. Wu, B. Xing, L. H. Wong, T. C. Sum, and S. G. Mhaisalkar, “Ultrafine gold nanowire networks as plasmonic antennae in organic photovoltaics,” J. Phys. Chem. C 116, 6453-6458 (2012).
13. Z. Yu, A. Raman, and S. Fan, “Thermodynamic upper bound on broadband light coupling with photonic structures,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 173901 (2012).
14. 2 limit in thin waveguides,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 121121 (2012).
15. S. A. Mann, R. R. Grote, R. M. Osgood Jr., and J. A. Schuller, “Dielectric particle and void resonators for thin film solar cell textures,” Opt. Express 19, 25729-25740 (2011).
16. N. C. Panoiu and R. M. Osgood, Jr., “Enhanced optical absorption for photovoltaics via excitation of waveguide and plasmon-polariton modes,” Opt. Lett. 32, 2825-2827 (2007).
17. M. A. Green, “Enhanced evanescent mode light trapping in organic solar cells and other low index optoelectronic devices,” Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 19, 473-477 (2011).
18. S. B. Mallick, N. P. Sergeant, M. Agrawal, J.-Y. Lee, and P. Peumans, “Coherent light trapping in thin-film photovoltaics,” MRS Bulletin 36, 453-460 (2011).
19. E. A. Schiff, “Thermodynamic limit to photonic-plasmonic light-trapping in thin films on metals,” J. Appl. Phys. 110, 104501 (2011).
20. X. Sheng, J. Hu, J. Michel, and L. C. Kimerling, “Light trapping limits in plasmonic solar cells: an analytical investigation,” Opt. Express 20, A496-A501 (2012).
21. M. A. Green and S. Pillai, “Harnessing plasmonics for solar cells,” Nature Photon. 6, 130-132 (2012).
22. M. K. Debe, “Variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry studies of oriented phthalocyanine films. II. copper phthalocyanine,” J. Vac. Sci. Technol., A 10, 2816-2821 (1992).
23. O. D. Gordan, M. Friedrich, and D. R. T. Zahn, “The anisotropic dielectric function for copper phthalocyanine thin films,” Org. Electron. 5, 291-297 (2004).
24. M. Dressel, B. Gompf, D. Faltermeier, A. K. Tripathi, J. Pflaum, and M. Schubert, “Kramers-kronig-consistent optical functions of anisotropic crystals: generalized spectroscopic ellipsometry on pentacene,” Opt. Express 16, 19770-19778 (2008).
25. J. A. Schuller, S. Karaveli, T. Schiros, K. He, S. Yang, I. Kymissis, J. Shan, and R. Zia, “Orientation of luminescent excitons in layered nanomaterials,” Nature Nanotech. 8, 271-276 (2013).
26. M. Campoy-Quiles, P. G. Etchegoin, and D. D. C. Bradley, “On the optical anisotropy of conjugated polymer thin films,” Phys. Rev. B 72, 045209 (2005).
27. D. M. DeLongchamp, R. J. Kline, E. K. Lin, D. A. Fischer, L. J. Richter, L. A. Lucas, M. Heeney, I. McCulloch, and J. E. Northrup, “High carrier mobility polythiophene thin films: structure determination by experiment and theory,” Adv. Mater. 19, 833-837 (2007).
28. M. C. Gurau, D. M. Delongchamp, B. M. Vogel, E. K. Lin, D. A. Fischer, S. Sambasivan, and L. J. Richter, “Measuring molecular order in poly(3-alkylthiophene) thin films with polarizing spectroscopies,” Langmuir 23, 834-842 (2007).
29. U. Zhokhavets, T. Erb, H. Hoppe, G. Gobsch, and N. S. Sariciftci, “Effect of annealing of poly(3-hexylthiophene)/fullerene bulk heterojunction composites on structural and optical properties,” Thin Solid Films 496, 679-682 (2006).
30. S.-Y. Chuang, H.-L. Chen, W.-H. Lee, Y.-C. Huang, W.-F. Su, W.-M. Jen, and C.-W. Chen, “Regioregularity effects in the chain orientation and optical anisotropy of composite polymer/fullerene films for high-efficiency, large-area organic solar cells,” J. Mater. Chem. 19, 5554-5560 (2009).
31. D. S. Germack, C. K. Chan, R. J. Kline, D. A. Fischer, D. J. Gundlach, M. F. Toney, L. J. Richter, and D. M. De-Longchamp, “Interfacial segregation in polymer/fullerene blend films for photovoltaic devices,” Macromolecules 43, 3828-3836 (2010).
32. M. R. Hammond, R. J. Kline, A. A. Herzing, L. J. Richter, D. S. Germack, H.-W. Ro, C. L. Soles, D. A. Fischer, T. Xu, L. Yu, M. F. Toney, and D. M. DeLongchamp, “Molecular order in high-efficiency polymer/fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells,” ACS Nano 5, 8248-8257 (2011).
33. J. Liu, Y. Sun, X. Gao, R. Xing, L. Zheng, S. Wu, Y. Geng, and Y. Han, “Oriented poly(3-hexylthiophene) nanofibril with the n-n stacking growth direction by solvent directional evaporation,” Langmuir 27, 4212-4219 (2011).
34. H. Sirringhaus, P. J. Brown, R. H. Friend, M. M. Nielsen, K. Bechgaard, B. M. W. Langeveld-Voss, A. J. H. Spiering, R. A. J. Janssen, E. W. Meijer, P. Herwig, and D. M. de Leeuw, “Two-dimensional charge transport in self-organized, high-mobility conjugated polymers,” Nature 401, 685-688 (1999).
35. D. E. Johnston, K. G. Yager, C.-Y. Nam, B. M. Ocko, and C. T. Black, “One-volt operation of high-current vertical channel polymer semiconductor field-effect transistors,” Nano Lett. 12, 4181-4186 (2012).
36. J. Jo, S.-I. Na, S.-S. Kim, T.-W. Lee, Y. Chung, S.-J. Kang, D. Vak, and D.-Y. Kim, “Three-dimensional bulk heterojunction morphology for achieving high internal quantum efficiency in polymer solar cells,” Adv. Funct. Mater. 19, 2398-2406 (2009).
37. G. F. Burkhard, E. T. Hoke, S. R. Scully, and M. D. McGehee, “Incomplete exciton harvesting from fullerenes in bulk heterojunction solar cells,” Nano Lett. 9, 4037-4041 (2009).
38. Z. Jacob and E. E. Narimanov, “Optical hyperspace for plasmons: Dyakonov states in metamaterials,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 93, 221109 (2008).
39. M. Liscidini and J. E. Sipe, “Quasiguided surface plasmon excitations in anisotropic materials,” Phys. Rev. B 81, 115335 (2010).
40. H. R. Stuart and D. G. Hall, “Thermodynamic limit to light trapping in thin planar structures,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 14, 3001-3008 (1997).
41. ASTM G173-03, http://rredc.nrel.goV/solar/spectra/am1.5/.
42. C. Chen, P. Berini, D. Feng, S. Tanev, and V. P. Tzolov, “Efficient and accurate numerical analysis of multilayer planar optical waveguides in lossy anisotropic media,” Opt. Express 7, 260-272 (2000).
43. E. Yablonovitch, “Statistical ray optics,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72, 899-907 (1982).
44. RSoft Design Group, Inc., http://www.rsoftdesign.com/.
45. T. U. Tumkur, L. Gu, J. K. Kitur, E. E. Narimanov, and M. A. Noginov, “Control of absorption with hyperbolic metamaterials,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 161103 (2012).
46. P. J. Brown, D. S. Thomas, A. Kohler, J. S. Wilson, J.-S. Kim, C. M. Ramsdale, H. Sirringhaus, and R. H. Friend, “Effect of interchain interactions on the absorption and emission of poly(3-hexylthiophene),” Phys. Rev. B 67, 064203 (2003).