Tailoring of the plasmonic and waveguide effect in bulk-heterojunction photovoltaic devices with ordered, nanopatterned structures

Various nano-patterned bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) films with different diameters and pitches were fabricated by a stamping method to tailor the plasmonic effect. The nanopatterned BHJ active layers exhibit regular-ordered embossing structures, which were confirmed by the surface morphological analysis with SEM and AFM. The simulation results confirm that devices with nanopatterned BHJ film with a diameter/pitch of 265/400 nm exhibit a strong improvement in E-field distribution intensity due to the combination of the plasmonic and waveguide modes compared to devices without a nanopattern, with 150/400 nm, or with 265/800 nm, which led to increased J_SCand cell efficiency in J-V curves under solar light illumination. The optimized plasmonic effect plays an important role in the light harvesting of BHJ devices.