Boosting the performances of semitransparent organic photovoltaics via synergetic near-infrared light management
Abstract
Semitransparent organic photovoltaics (ST‐OPVs) offer promising prospects for application in building‐integrated photovoltaic systems and greenhouses, but further improvement of their performance faces a delicate trade‐off between the two competing indexes of power conversion efficiency (PCE) and average visible transmittance (AVT). Herein, the authors take advantage of coupling plasmonics with the optical design of ST‐OPVs to enhance near‐infrared absorption and hence simultaneously improve efficiency and visible transparency to the maximum extent. By integrating core–bishell PdCu@Au@SiO 2 nanotripods that act as optically isotropic Lambertian sources with near‐infrared‐customized localized surface plasmon resonance in an optimal ternary PM6:BTP‐eC9:L8‐BO‐based ST‐OPV, it is shown that their interplay with a multilayer optical coupling layer, consisting of ZnS(130 nm)/Na 3 AlF 6 (60 nm)/WO 3 (100 nm)/LaF 3 (50 nm) identified from high‐throughput optical screening, leads to a record‐high PCE of 16.14% (certified as 15.90%) along with an excellent AVT of 33.02%. The strong enhancement of the light utilization efficiency by ≈50% as compared to the counterpart device without optical engineering provides an encouraging and universal pathway for promoting breakthroughs in ST‐OPVs from meticulous optical design.