Manganese Doped Zinc Sulphide Nanoparticles for Enhanced Performance of Organic Solar Cells
Abstract
Manganese doped zinc sulphide (ZnS:Mn) nanoparticles (NPs) were employed in the functional layer of thin film organic solar cells whose photoactive layer is composed of a polymer blend poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl):phenylC61-butyric-acid methyl-ester (P3HT:PCBM). The incorporation of the nanoparticles in the solar absorber layer of the solar cells brought significant improvement on device performances. Such improved performances, however, are dependent of the doping concentration of NPs, and the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) recorded was 4.53% at the optimum concentration of 3 wt%. However, increasing the concentration to 5 wt% turned out to be unfavourable for the device performance resulting in a slight reduction in PCE of 4.25 %. This performance enhancement was attributed to occurrence of near-field enhancement and light scattering effects of the nanoparticles in the organic solar cells.
Keywords
Organic solar cells, metallic nanoparticles, plasmon resonance, zinc sulphide, P3HT, PCBM