Design and analysis of high efficiency perovskite solar cell with ZnO nanorods and plasmonic nanoparticles

Recently, the utilization of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite has become prevalent in solar cell applications due to its promising optical properties. In this study, a perovskite solar cell (PSC) based on ZnO nanorods (NRs) as the electron transport layer (ETL) was numerically simulated and the plasmonic effects of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) were surveyed beside the previously desirable result of using ZnO nanorod observed in 3rd generation organic photovoltaic devices. Since the unique properties of plasmonic structures, particularly the ability to guide and trap the light at nanometer dimensions, would cause a substantial increase in light absorption, improved device performance can be expected. In this article, we showed that a model of perovskite solar cell comprised of FTO/ZnO/ZnO NR/ CH3NH3PbI3/spiro-MeOTAD/Au yielded promising results after incorporating Au NPs. While utilizing the benefits of ZnO nanorod ETL is a common method to achieve high-performance halide PSCs, we revealed that incorporating Au NPs between nanorods leads to an even superior behavior. After analyzing various diameters of Au nanoparticles and densities of ZnO nanorod arrays and adopting the optimum value of both, results of our simulations demonstrated that CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite infiltrated ZnO NRs solar cell with Au NPs (without Au NPs) has an efficiency of “16.77%” (14.51%), the fill factor of “78.28%” (76.60%) with a short circuit current density of “20.56 mA/cm^2” (18.07 mA/cm^2). This drastic improvement can pave the way for further studies to fabricate and reap benefit out of the plasmonic effect in perovskite solar cells.