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Silver Nanoprisms in Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells Zhixiong Cao

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Silver Nanoprisms in Plasmonic Organic Solar Cells Zhixiong Cao Silver nanoprisms in plasmonic organic solar cells Zhixiong Cao To cite this version: Zhixiong Cao. Silver nanoprisms in plasmonic organic solar cells. Micro and nanotechnolo- gies/Microelectronics. Ecole Centrale Marseille, 2014. English. NNT : 2014ECDM0015. tel- 01406363 HAL Id: tel-01406363 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01406363 Submitted on 1 Dec 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. ÉCOLE CENTRALE DE MARSEILLE École Doctorale ED 353 - Sciences Physiques pour l’Ingénieur Préparée au laboratoire IM2NP, UMR-CNRS 7334, équipe Opto-PV THÈSE DE DOCTORAT pour obtenir le grade de DOCTEUR de l’ÉCOLE CENTRALE de MARSEILLE Discipline : Micro Nano électronique TITRE DE LA THÈSE : Silver nanoprisms in plasmonic organic solar cells Par CAO Zhixiong Directeur de thèse : ESCOUBAS Ludovic Co-directrice de thèse : CHEN Zhuoying Soutenue le 15 Décembre 2014 devant le jury composé de : LEQUEUX Nicolas Prof de l’ESPCI, Paris Rapporteur VIGNAU Laurence Prof de l’Université de Bordeaux I, Bordeaux Rapporteur RATIER Bernard Prof de l’Université de Limoges, Limoges Examinateur ESCOUBAS Ludovic Prof de l’Université d'Aix-Marseille, Marseille Directeur de thèse CHEN Zhuoying Chargé de recherche au CNRS, ESPCI, Paris Co-directrice de thèse Acknowledgements First of all, this thesis is a project of collaboration between Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) and Ecole Centrale groups of Lille, Nantes, Lyon, Paris, and Marseille. I appreciate the CSC and Ecole Centrale de Marseille, as well as the OPTO-PV group, IM2NP (Institut Matériaux Microélectronique Nanosciences de Provence), Aix-Marseille University and CNRS 7334 & 8213 for financial support. I would like also thank my thesis committee, which includes Prof. VIGNAU Laurence, LEQUEUX Nicolas and RATIER Bernard. Particularly, I really appreciate my thesis supervisors, Dr. CHEN Zhuoying and Prof. ESCOUBAS Ludovic. They helped me so much: they gave me many advices on experiments, took a lot of time to correct all my thesis and paper in detail…. Anyway, without their helps, tolerance and encouragement, I could probably not finish my thesis. Thank you, my supervisors! I also want to thank my dear brother, Mr. CAO Chaoqun. Without his sacrifice and financial support, I could not finish my studies in high school and in university, and so that I would not finish my thesis. I would like to say: you are great, my brother! I also acknowledge the technicians, M. FAURE Yves, WARCHOL François and COMBES Alain, FIORIDO Tomas, as well as mu colleagues and friends: PASQUINELLI Marcel, BARAKEL Damien, BRISSONNEAU Vincent, BERENGUIER Baptiste, BOU Adrien, BRUCKNER Jean-Baptiste, WOOD Thomas, ZHU Mingxuan and VEDRAINE Sylvain for their helps. I appreciate Dr. XU Xiangzhen (ESPCI, Paris), the courtesy of Concept Scientific Instruments and ScienTec Company for their helps in characterizations. In the end, I would like to thank all of my friends and colleagues appeared in my life in France. It was a joyful and colorful life staying in France with them. Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ i Table of Figures ....................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ xv General introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction and Background Knowledge ................................................................................. 3 1.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 3 1.2. State-of-art of photovoltaics ........................................................................................... 3 1.2.1. History and development of photovoltaics ..................................................... 3 1.2.2. Development of organic solar cells ................................................................ 6 1.3. Basic knowledge of organic solar cells .......................................................................... 7 1.3.1. Organic semiconductors and their applications in solar cells ........................ 7 1.3.2. The electronic structure of conjugated polymers ........................................... 7 1.3.3. Excitons and polarons in organic semiconductors ....................................... 10 1.3.4. Photo-conversion process ............................................................................. 11 1.3.4.1. Absorption of photons and generation of excitons ....................................... 11 1.3.4.2. Diffusion of excitons .................................................................................... 14 1.3.4.3. Dissociation of excitons ............................................................................... 15 1.3.4.4. Transport of charge carriers ......................................................................... 16 1.3.4.5. Extraction of charges .................................................................................... 17 1.3.5. Architectures of organic solar cells .............................................................. 18 1.3.5.1. General architecture of organic solar cells ................................................... 18 1.3.5.2. Single layer cells .......................................................................................... 19 1.3.5.3. Planar heterojunction cells ........................................................................... 19 i Table of Contents 1.3.5.4. Bulk heterojunction cells .............................................................................. 19 1.3.5.5. Tandem solar cells ........................................................................................ 19 1.4. Organic bulk heterojunction solar cells using polymers and small molecules ............ 20 1.4.1. Hole extraction layer: PEDOT:PSS ............................................................. 20 1.4.2. Bulk heterojunction ...................................................................................... 22 1.4.2.1. Donor material: P3HT .................................................................................. 22 1.4.2.2. Acceptor material: PCBM ............................................................................ 25 1.4.2.3. P3HT:PCBM film ........................................................................................ 26 1.4.3. Photovoltaic Characteristics of organic solar cells ...................................... 27 1.4.3.1. Current-voltage response and efficiency ...................................................... 27 1.4.3.2. Performance-limiting factors ........................................................................ 29 1.5. Plasmonic organic solar cells ....................................................................................... 32 1.5.1. Plasmons ....................................................................................................... 33 1.5.1.1. Bulk plasmons .............................................................................................. 33 1.5.1.2. Surface plasmons on planar metal-dielectric interfaces ............................... 34 1.5.1.3. Localized surface plasmons in metallic nanoparticles ................................. 35 1.5.2. Organic solar cells utilizing localized surface plasmons ............................. 42 1.5.2.1. Mechanisms of light absorption enhanced by localized surface plasmons .. 42 1.5.2.2. Plasmonic organic solar cells ....................................................................... 43 1.6. Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 45 Chapter II .................................................................................................................................. 47 Experimental methods and techniques ..................................................................................... 47 2.1. Materials ....................................................................................................................... 47 2.2. Film and photovoltaic device preparation .................................................................... 48 2.2.1. General preparation technique for thin films: Spin-coating ......................... 48 2.2.2. Preparation of films and photovoltaic device samples ................................. 49 ii Table of Contents 2.2.2.1. General preparation procedure for films on glass substrate or ITO-coated substrate and for photovoltaic devices ............................................................................
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