Performance enhancement of organic photovoltaics using plasmonic nanoparticles has been limited without interparticle plasmon coupling. We demonstrate high performance organic photovoltaics employing gold nanoparticle clusters with controlled morphology as a plasmonic component. Near-field coupling at the interparticle gaps of nanoparticle clusters gives rise to strong enhancement in localized electromagnetic field, which led to the significant improvement of exciton generation and dissociation in the active layer of organic solar cells. A power conversion efficiency of 9.48% is attained by employing gold nanoparticle clusters at the bottom of the organic active layer. This is one of the highest efficiency values reported thus far for the single active layer organic photovoltaics.
Keywords: cluster; electric field distribution; exciton dissociation; organic photovoltaics; plasmon.