Imprinting localized plasmons for enhanced solar cells

Imprinted silver nanovoid arrays are investigated via angle-resolved reflectometry to demonstrate their suitability for plasmonic light trapping. Both wavelength-and subwavelength-scale nanovoids are imprinted into standard solar cell architectures to achieve nanostructured metallic electrodes which provide enhanced absorption for improving solar cell performance. The technique is versatile, low-cost and scalable and can be applied to a wide range of organic semiconductors. Absorption features which are independent of incident polarization and weakly dependent on incident angle reveal localized plasmonic modes at the structured interface. Metallic nanostructure-PCPDTBT:PCBM samples demonstrate absorption enhancements of up to 40%. The structured interface provides light trapping, which boosts absorption at wavelengths where the semiconductors absorb poorly.