Plasmonic core-shell metal-organic nanoparticles enhanced dye-sensitized solar cells

We present an investigation on introducing core-shell Au@PVP nanoparticles (NPs) into dye-sensitized solar cells. As a novel core-shell NPs structure, Au@PVP present not only the chemical stability to iodide/triiodide electrolyte, but also the adhesiveness to dye molecules, which could help to localize most of dye molecules around plasmonic NPs, hence increasing the optical absorption consequently the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the device. We obtain a PCE enhancement of 30% from 3.3% to 4.3% with incorporation of Au@PVP NPs. Moreover, the device performance with different concentration of Au@PVP NPs from 0 to 12.5 wt% has been studied, and we draw the conclusion that the performance of DSCs could be well improved through enhancing the light absorption by local surface plasmon (LSP) effect from Au@PVP NPs with an optimized concentration. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America