Solar Trap: Manipulation and Modification of Solar Light in organic Solar Cells

Despite the advances in the field of light-management using nanostructures, the manipulation of light in organic films with the aid of metamaterials of plasmonic structures presents a major challenge and is far from being understood. In the SolarTrap project, new structures will be examined, with the aim to increase the absorption of photons in the photoactive layer of the solar cell. For this purpose, colloidal metal-dielectric hybrid nanoparticles, structures which enable the surface-enhanced "up"-conversion and so-called metastructures will be investigated. The SolarTrap project focuses on the correlation of the different light-management methods for various solar cell structures with the efficiency of light coupling and energy conversion. The detailed studies may pinpoint the limiting factors of the individual concepts. As a light-emitting diode acts like an inverse solar cell, the obtained results can also be applied to organic light emitting devices (OLEDs).