Improving Light Harvesting in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Using Hybrid Bimetallic Nanostructures

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• 作者：Holly F. Zarick ; William R. Erwin ; Abdelaziz Boulesbaa ; Olivia K. Hurd ; Joseph A. Webb ; Alexander A. Puretzky ; David B. Geohegan ; Rizia Bardhan
• 刊名：ACS Photonics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：March 16, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：3
• 期：3
• 页码：385-394
• 全文大小：727K
• ISSN：2330-4022

文摘

In this work we demonstrate improved light trapping in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with hybrid bimetallic gold core/silver shell nanostructures. Silica-coated bimetallic nanostructures (Au/Ag/SiO₂ NSs) integrated in the active layer of DSSCs resulted in 7.51% power conversion efficiency relative to 5.97% for reference DSSCs, giving rise to 26% enhancement in device performance. DSSC efficiencies were governed by the particle density of Au/Ag/SiO₂ NSs with best performing devices utilizing only 0.44 wt % of nanostructures. We performed transient absorption spectroscopy of DSSCs with variable concentrations of Au/Ag/SiO₂ NSs and observed an increase in amplitude and decrease in lifetime with increasing particle density relative to reference. We attributed this trend to plasmon resonant energy transfer and population of the singlet excited states of the sensitizer molecules at the optimum concentration of NSs promoting enhanced exciton generation and rapid charge transfer into TiO₂.