Nanopatterning of P3HT:PCBM for organic solar cell realization

Organic solar cells (OSC) are becoming an important alternative to standard inorganic ones since they have many intrinsic advantage, such as light weight, flexibility, and low fabrication costs. The use of plasmonic backcontact grating with nanometric pitch can enhance the absorption in the active layer of organic solar cell and consequently increase the power conversion efficiency. We realized P3HT:PCBM films with a nanopatterned architecture. With transmission measurements and with the aid of simulations we demonstrate the increase of the absorption in the P3HT:PCBM film. This approach can be used to increase the efficiency in OSC. 20 working solar cells with flat and structured architecture were realized and the average efficiency of structured cells was 13.7 % higher than that of flat cells.