Enhancing the organic solar cell efficiency by combining plasmonic and FÖrster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) effects

Here, we combine two strategies i.e., Förster resonance energy transfer and plasmonic effect, to enhance the photovoltaic performance in organic solar cells by introducing gold nanoparticles and squaraine in a binary mixture of poly(3-hexylthiophene):phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester. In this configuration, the Förster resonance energy transfer between poly(3-hexylthiophene) and squaraine reduces the electrical loss arising from the exciton recombination in poly(3-hexylthiophene), while gold nanoparticles enable an efficient charge carrier generation in poly(3-hexylthiophene):squaraine mixture as optically confirmed by photoluminescence measurement and transient absorption spectroscopy. The multicomponent organic solar cells demonstrate an enhancement of ~36% in power conversion efficiency over the reference device.