Facile embedding of SiO2 nanoparticles in organic solar cells for performance improvement

Abstract In this paper, performance improvement of organic solar cells (OSCs) via facile embedding of SiO 2 nanoparticles is reported. Both experimental and theoretical studies indicate that the improved performance is mainly owed to the increased short circuit current density ( J sc ), which can be further attributed to elongated optical path length and thus to enhanced light confinement caused by light scattering of SiO 2 nanoparticles. Compared to the planar reference device with a structure of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:PC 61 BM/Al, the optimized one embedded with 160-nm-diameter SiO 2 nanoparticles exhibits ∼17.5% increase in J sc , i.e., from 10.30 to 12.10 mA/cm 2 , leading to the resultant performance improvement. Owing to the unique advantages of SiO 2 nanoparticles including electrical insulation, low cost and easy fabrication, valuable guidelines for fabricating the related high performance-to-cost OSCs can be provided by this study.