Direct plasmonic solar cell efficiency dependence on spiro-OMeTAD Li-TFSI content

The proliferation of the internet of things (IoT) and other low-power devices demands the development of energy harvesting solutions to alleviate IoT hardware dependence on single-use batteries, making their deployment more sustainable. The propagation of energy harvesting solutions is strongly associated with technical performance, cost and aesthetics, with the latter often being the driver of adoption. The general abundance of light in the vicinity of IoT devices under their main operation window enables the use of indoor and outdoor photovoltaics as energy harvesters. From those, highly transparent solar cells allow an increased possibility to place a sustainable power source close to the sensors without significant visual appearance. Herein, we report the effect of hole transport layer Li-TFSI dopant content on semi-transparent, direct plasmonic solar cells (DPSC) with a transparency of more than 80% in the 450–800 nm region. The findings revealed that the amount of oxidized spiro-OMeTAD (spiro⁺TFSI⁻) significantly modulates the transparency, effective conductance and conditions of device performance, with an optimal performance reached at around 33% relative concentration of Li-TFSI concerning spiro-OMeTAD. The Li-TFSI content did not affect the immediate charge extraction, as revealed by an analysis of electron–phonon lifetime. Hot electrons and holes were injected into the respective layers within 150 fs, suggesting simultaneous injection, as supported by the absence of hysteresis in the I–V curves. The spiro-OMeTAD layer reduces the Au nanoparticles’ reflection/backscattering, which improves the overall cell transparency. The results show that the system can be made highly transparent by precise tuning of the doping level of the spiro-OMeTAD layer with retained plasmonics, large optical cross-sections and the ultrathin nature of the devices.