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Cite This: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Plasmonically Engineered Textile Polymer Solar Cells for HighPerformance, Wearable Photovoltaics Seok Ho Cho,† Jaegab Lee,‡ Mi Jung Lee,‡ Hyo Jin Kim,§ Sung-Min Lee,*,‡ and Kyung Cheol Choi*,∥ †
Department of Clothing and Textiles, Chonnam National University, 77, Yongbong-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju 61186, Republic of Korea School of Materials Science and Engineering, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneung-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02707, Republic of Korea § Photonic Energy Research Center, Korea Photonics Technology Institute, 108 Chumdanbencheo-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju 61007, Republic of Korea ∥ School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea ‡
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S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: A practically applicable type of wearable polymer solar cells (PSCs) is presented with the enhanced performance by exploiting simply embodied, plasmonic nanostructures on a commercially available textile platform of optically opaque, geometrically uneven, and physically permeable woven fabrics that are commonly not compatible with organic photovoltaics. On a conformable fabric substrate preferentially processed with organic/ inorganic multilayers for both planarization and encapsulation, the fabrication of top-illuminated, inverted type of PSCs with a transparent top electrode consisting of optimized dielectric/metal/dielectric multilayers is conducted, where a nanostructure of disorderly distributed elliptical hemispheres is implanted at an opaque bottom silver electrode by spincoated silica nanoparticles in advance of depositing this electrode. The nanostructured bottom electrode promotes the light trapping effect at wavelengths of the surface plasmon resonance, as well as reduces the electrical Ohmic loss, thereby achieving a device with the power conversion efficiency of ∼8.71% at the given plasmonic device, where a net improvement of the efficiency is ∼1.46% compared to the planar device comprising otherwise same constituent layers. Systematic studies on optical properties and associated photovoltaic performance in experiments, together with analytic numerical modeling, allow quantitative understanding of the underlying physics, providing optimal rules for tailoring random nanostructures to the textile PSCs in the context of high-performance wearable photovoltaics. KEYWORDS: wearable photovoltaics, textile polymer solar cells, plasmonic nanostructures, nanophotonic light manipulation, disorderly distributed elliptical hemispheres
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fabrics (i.e., textile substrates),1,10−12 whereas the patch-typed devices is expected to be with the stretchable electronics technology working on elastic substrates.11,13,14 Many attempts have been successfully made so far to demonstrate concepts of both cloth-typed and patch-typed solar cells with inorganic (e.g., silicon, III−V)15−17 or organic (e.g., polymeric)18−23 active materials, where the cloth-typed solar cells particularly have received a great deal of attention in the commercial fields as they can reliably provide sufficient electric power to heat generators or sensing systems of functional outdoor clothes.3,24−26 By virtue of favorable characteristics of polymer solar cells (PSCs) such as ultrathin (
