Open AccessAluminum plasmonic nanoparticles enhanced dye sensitized solar cells
Author(s) -
Qi Xu,
Fang Liu,
Yuxiang Liu,
Meng Wang,
Kaiyu Cui,
Xue Feng,
Wei Zhang,
Yidong Huang
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.22.00a301
Subject(s) - dye sensitized solar cell , materials science , plasmon , dielectric spectroscopy , triiodide , nanoparticle , energy conversion efficiency , plasmonic solar cell , surface plasmon resonance , optoelectronics , electrochemistry , absorption spectroscopy , absorption (acoustics) , electrolyte , nanotechnology , optics , electrode , polymer solar cell , chemistry , composite material , physics
We present an investigation on utilizing plasmonic aluminium (Al) nanoparticles (NPs) to enhance the optical absorption of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The Al NPs exhibit not only the light absorption enhancement in solar cells with localized surface plasmon (LSP) effect but also the chemical stability to iodide/triiodide electrolyte. Besides, the lower work function (~4.06 eV), compared with that of TiO₂ (~4.6 eV), may suppress the quenching processes, such as charge transfer to metal NPs, to reduce the loss. Thus, high concentration of Al NPs could be incorporated into the TiO₂ anodes, and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of DSCs is improved by nearly 13%. Moreover, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) characterization also indicates that the plasmonic DSCs with Al NPs present better electrochemical performance than regular ones, which contributes to the improvement of PCE of the device.