Metals decorated nanocomposite assisted charge transport in polymer solar cell

Silver:zinc nanocomposite (Ag:Zn BMNC) was successfully synthesized by chemical reduction method and employed in various layers of the device structure to fabricate efficient thin film organic solar cell. The photoactive layer of the solar cell is composed of poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric-acidmethyl-ester (P3HT:PCBM). The nanocomposites, loaded at various layers of the device structure, appeared to have different influences on the performance of the solar cells. The optical and electrical properties of the nanoparticles are found to be favourable to harvest solar radiation because of the local plasmon resonance effect (LPSR) of the metal nano-particles. The concentration of Ag:Zn nano-particle has been successfully optimized to achieve a high device performance which led to a power conversion efficiency as high as 5% under ambient laboratory condition. The x-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning and Tunnelling electron microscopies (SEM and TEM) were employed to investigate the nature of the nano-composite.