Absence of Structural Impact of Noble Nanoparticles on P3HT:PCBM Blends for Plasmon-Enhanced Bulk-Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells Probed by Synchrotron GI-XRD

The incorporation of noble metal nanoparticles, displaying localized surface plasmon resonance, in the active area of donor-acceptor bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaic devices is an industrially compatible light trapping strategy, able to guarantee better absorption of the incident photons and give an efficiency improvement between 12% and 38%. In the present work, we investigate the effect of Au and Ag nanoparticles blended with P3HT: PCBM on the P3HT crystallization dynamics by synchrotron grazing incidence X-ray diffraction. We conclude that the presence of (1) 80 nm Au, (2) mix of 5 nm, 50 nm, 80 nm Au, (3) 40 nm Ag, and (4) 10 nm, 40 nm, 60 nm Ag colloidal nanoparticles, at different concentrations below 0.3 wt% for Au and below 0.1% for Ag in P3HT: PCBM blends, does not affect the behaviour of the blends themselves.