We investigate both optical and electrical properties of organic solar cells (OSCs) incorporating 2D periodic metallic back grating as an anode. Using a unified finite-difference approach, the multiphysics modeling framework for plasmonic OSCs is established to seamlessly connect the photon absorption with carrier transport and collection by solving the Maxwell's equations and semiconductor equ...

For ultrathin films of a given material, light absorption is proportional to the film thickness. However, if the optical constants of the film are chosen in an optimal way, light absorption can be high even for extremely thin films and optical path length. We derive the optimal conditions and show how the maximized absorptance depends on film thickness. It is then shown that the optimal situati...

Topological insulators are a new class of quantum materials with metallic (edge) surface states and insulating bulk states. They demonstrate a variety of novel electronic and optical properties, which make them highly promising electronic, spintronic, and optoelectronic materials. We report on a novel conic plasmonic nanostructure that is made of bulk-insulating topological insulators and has a...

A novel type of plasmonic light trapping structure is presented in this paper, composed of metal nanoparticles synthesized in colloidal solution and self-assembled in uniform long-range arrays using a wet-coating method. The high monodispersion in size and spherical shape of the gold colloids used in this work allows a precise match between their measured optical properties and electromagnetic ...

It has been universally delineated that the plasmonic metal nanoparticles can enhance the efficiency of photovoltaic cell by increasing the probability of energetic solar photons capturing phenomena using localized surface plasmonic resonance response. In this paper, we developed a novel in-situ simple approach to synthesize noble plasmonic silver nanoparticles (AgNP) from aqueous poly-vinyl-py...

Plasmonic hot-electron generation has recently come into focus as a new scheme for solar energy conversion. So far, however, due to the relatively narrow bandwidth of the surface plasmon resonances and the insufficient resonant light absorption, most of plasmonic photocatalysts show narrow-band spectral responsivities and small solar energy conversion efficiencies. Here we experimentally demons...

In this paper, a compact plasmonic metamaterial absorber for terahertz frequencies is proposed and simulated. The absorber is based on metamaterial graphene structures, and benefits from dynamically controllable properties of graphene. Through patterning graphene layers, plasmonic resonances are tailored to provide a dual band as well as an improved bandwidth absorption. Unit cell of the design...

An efficient approach to producing hexagonally self-assembled and well-dispersed gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) in the pores of porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) is reported. This approach is particularly useful for tuning the surface plasmon resonance frequency of Au NPs by varying the effective dielectric constant of AAO. A strongly enhanced Raman spectrum of dye molecule rhodamine 6G using t...