Plasmonic Organic Solar Cell

The multidisciplinary project Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells (PLASMOSOL) embraces the fields of nanophotonics, materials research and optoelectronic devices. It particularly focuses at research in plasmonic light trapping schemes for organic solar cell technology with improved efficiency. It aims at investigation of new metallic nanostructures exhibiting unique plasmonic characteristics for collecting of incident light intensity over broad wavelength and angular ranges and its concentrating at absorber region in thin film organic solar cell architectures. It brings together complementary teams pursuing research in plasmonics (lead by Dr. Jakub Dostalek), materials for photovoltaic technologies (lead by Dr. Theodoros Dimopoulos) at Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) with the group of Ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Emil J. W. List at NanoTecCenter Weiz Forschungsgesellschaft (NTCW) operating in the field of organic optoelectronic devices. The goal of this project exploration of new generic plasmonic light trapping schemes that will be applied for broad range of polymer OSC and enable advancing their efficiency over 10 %. In the first phase of the project, two complementary types of plasmonic light trapping concepts will be theoretically and experimentally investigated: A) multi-diffractive elements utilizing nano-imprint lithography (NIL) and B) arrays ZnO nanowire electrodes decorated with metallic nanoparticles. In the second stage of the project C), series of model devices with and without implemented plasmonic structures will be developed and fully characterized in order to correlate their performance with the properties of the plasmonic structures and to compare with current state-of-the-art solar cells.

No additional funding sources recorded.