Improving Optical Absorption in Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells by Incorporating Indium Tin Oxide-Coated Silver Nano-Spheres

Improving Optical Absorption in Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells by Incorporating Indium Tin Oxide-Coated Silver Nano-Spheres

In this paper, a simulation of a core-shell Ag@ITO nano-sphere plasmonic organic solar cell, is done. A 3-D finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) is used for analysis. The influence of the shell thickness and the shell materials on the optical performance of the plasmonic organic solar cell, are investigated. It was shown that the use of ITO, as a protective coating for the Ag nano-sphere core, was more appropriate than using SiO2 as a protective coating. Indeed, using ITO as a nano-sphere coating of Ag, has led to increase power absorption in the structure of the plasmonic organic solar cell. Furthermore, by increasing the thickness of the ITO coating from 1nm to 5nm, no change in the absorption enhancement has been achieved; whereas in the case of SiO2, by increasing the thickness of this coating, power absorption of the plasmonic organic solar cell, would be decreased.