Metal nano-composite induced light trapping and enhanced solar cell performances

Highlights: • A tri-metallic nano-composite involving Ag, Fe and N was successfully used in energy harvesting. • The polycrystalline form the composite exhibited high light trapping and enhanced device performance. • Metal nanocomposites are used to improve charge transport processes in TFOSC. A tri-metallic nano-particles (NPs) involving Silver, Iron and Nickel (Ag:Fe:Ni) was successfully synthesized using a wet chemical reduction method. The synthesized nano-composite (Ag:Fe:Ni) has exhibited polycrystalline morphology in powder form, which was used as nano-composite in a P3HT:PCBM blend solar absorber layer of the thin film organic solar cell (TFOSC) to enhance the collection of photons. Consequently, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the thin film organic solar cells grew by 42% due to the incorporation of NPs in the devices structure. However, the concentration of metal nano-particles was varied from 0% to 3% by weight to determine the optimum doping level of the NPs for maximum effect in the solar absorbers. The effect of the metal nano-particles is clearly evident by high short circuit current ($J_{sc}$) of TFOSC which is attributed to improve the dissociation of exciton and charge transport processes in the medium. The optical and morphological characteristics of the nanoparticles were discussed in terms of the measured parameters.