Design of Absorption Enhanced Organic Solar Cell

One of the major reasons for the reported low power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic solar cell is the fact that organic material has generally short exciton diffusion length where only thin active material is made possible in the organic solar cell structure. To compensate for the low light absorption issue due to the thin photoactive layer of the device, various light trapping techniques have been introduced in past solar cell designs to address the light absorption issue and hence the PCE. This research work is to systematically study on two light trapping techniques, namely plasmonic resonance effect techniques and anti-surface reflection technique with an attempt to enhance the light absorption capability. This enhanced absorption cell would eventually contribute to the PCE of the solar cell. These are achieved by means of incorporating NPs into the solar cell layer structure as well as the application of anti reflection coating on the solar cell. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) based simulation tool known as Lumerical is deployed to study how design parameters such as NPs diameter, spacing period, material and various configurations of anti-reflection coating (ARC) structures to improve and enhance light absorption.