Absence of Structural Impact of Noble Nanoparticles on P3HT: PCBM Blends for Plasmon Enhanced Bulk-Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells Probed by Synchrotron Grazing Incidence X-Ray Diffraction

TL;DR

This study investigates whether noble metal nanoparticles affect the crystallization of P3HT:PCBM blends in organic solar cells and finds no structural impact using synchrotron grazing incidence X-ray diffraction.

Contribution

It provides evidence that noble metal nanoparticles do not alter the crystallization dynamics of P3HT:PCBM blends at low concentrations.

Findings

Noble nanoparticles do not affect P3HT crystallization.

Different sizes and types of nanoparticles show no structural impact.

Crystallization behavior remains unchanged with nanoparticle addition.

Abstract

The incorporation of noble metal nanoparticles, displaying localized surface plasmon resonance, in the active area of donor-acceptor bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaic devices is an industrially compatible light trapping strategy, able to guarantee better absorption of the incident photons and give an efficiency improvement between 12% and 38%. In the present work, we investigate the effect of Au and Ag nanoparticles blended with P3HT: PCBM on the P3HT crystallization dynamics by synchrotron grazing incidence X-ray diffraction. We conclude that the presence of (1) 80nm Au, (2) mix of 5nm, 50nm, 80nm Au, (3) 40nm Ag, and (4) 10nm, 40nm, 60nm Ag colloidal nanoparticles, at different concentrations below 0.3 wt% in P3HT: PCBM blends, does not affect the behaviour of the blends themselves.