Influence of silver nanoparticles on enhancing performance of optical absorption property in a perovskite solar cell

Abstract This report presents a mostly numerical investigation of solar absorptance enhancement in PSCs through solving partial differential equations. The designed structural device comprised five layers of the transparent conducting contact (ITO), the electron transport layer (TiO 2 ), the active layer (CH 3 NH 3 PBI 3 ) embedding with plasmonic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), the hole transporting layer (NiO), and the back reflectors (Ag). The calculation results showed that the device performance was highly dependent on the particle size of AgNP, structural formation and the location of the AgNPs. Overall, the optimum particle radius was <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>r</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">nm</mml:mi> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> </mml:math> located at the middle of the activated layer <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mfenced close=")" open="(" separators=""> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">nm</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> </mml:math> a 2-dimensional array of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> </mml:math> particles per unit cell and an interparticle distance of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="0.25em"/> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">nm</mml:mi> </mml:math> were achieved for the AgNPs in the active layer (AL) of the PSCs with the highest optical enhancement of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>η</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.24</mml:mn> <mml:mo>.</mml:mo> </mml:math>