Photocurrent Enhancement by Introducing Gold Nanoparticles in Nanostructures Based Heterojunction Solar Cell Device
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Photocurrent Enhancement by Introducing Gold Nanoparticles in Nanostructures Based Heterojunction Solar Cell Device Gen Long*, Kenneth Sabalo, Natalie MacDonald, Michael Beattie, Mostafa Sadoqi Department of Physics, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Pkwy, Jamaica, NY 11439-9000, USA *Corresponding author, E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT In this paper, we report a first hand study of plasmon-enhanced photocurrent observed in hybrid nanostructures based heterojunction solar cell. The heterojunction solar cell was fabricated, using chemically synthesized narrow gap, IV-VI group semiconductor nanoparticles (PbS) of 3~6nm diameter, wide gap semiconductor ZnO nanowires of 500nm~1 μm length and ~50nm diameter, and gold nanoparticles (~5nm to 30nm), by spincoating (~20cycles) onto FTO glasses, in ambient conditions (25°C, 1atm). The synthesized nanostructures were characterized by XRD, UV-VIS absorption, SEM, TEM, solar simulator, etc. Nanostructures of variant sizes were integrated in to the heterojunction devices to study the effects on photocurrent and solar cell performance. The sizes, lengths, thickness of nanostructures were optimized to have best solar cell devices. The effects of fabrication conditions (such as growth temperature, growth time, anneal temperature, ligand treatments, in air or in N2, etc.) on device performance were also studied. The architecture of film stack, i.e., the positions of Au nanoparticles and PbS nanoparticles were also studied. It was confirmed that introducing Au nanopartiles with proper size would lead to the increase of photocurrent. The key challenges were to minimize the trap states and optimize the interface of nanostructures. INTRODUCTION The third generation solar cell composed of chemically synthesized colloidal nanostructures in quantum confined scale has been in the center of extensive studies for more than a decade, due to its easy fabrication, tunable physical properties, inexpensive material cost, wider absorption spectra, and industrial scalability. [1,2] Solar cells made of various nanomaterials of almost all kinds, devices of different architectures and of different mechanisms have been proposed and studied in experiments. One of the most studied architecture for the third generation solar cell is bulk heterojunction structured solar cell. [38] One of the key challenges in the fabrication of such solar cells is the widely present trap states that degrade device performance and stability. Introducing plasmonic components in the nanostructures based solar cell device may serves a novel approach of boosting solar cell performance. [9-13] In this paper, we report a systematic, ongoing study of gold nanoparticles enhanced photocurrent observed in colloidal nanostructures based solar cell of heterojunction architecture composed by ZnO nanowires and PbS nanoparticles, with introduction of Au nanoparticles. A combination of ZnO (wide gap) and PbS (narrow gap) nanostructures will not only make utmost use of solar light since both visible light and near infrared wavelength ran
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