Nanoparticle-Enhanced Silver-Nanowire Plasmonic Electrodes for High-Performance Organic Optoelectronic Devices

Abstract

Improved performance in plasmonic organic solar cells (OSCs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) via strong plasmon-coupling effects generated by aligned silver nanowire (AgNW) transparent electrodes decorated with core–shell silver–silica nanoparticles (Ag@SiO2NPs) is demonstrated. NP-enhanced plasmonic AgNW (Ag@SiO2NP–AgNW) electrodes enable substantially enhanced radiative emission and light absorption efficiency due to strong hybridized plasmon coupling between localized surface plasmons (LSPs) and propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) modes, which leads to improved device performance in organic optoelectronic devices (OODs). The discrete dipole approximation (DDA) calculation of the electric field verifies a strongly enhanced plasmon-coupling effect caused by decorating core–shell Ag@SiO2NPs onto the AgNWs. Notably, an electroluminescence efficiency of 25.33 cd A−1 (at 3.2 V) and a power efficiency of 25.14 lm W−1 (3.0 V) in OLEDs, as well as a power conversion efficiency (PCE) value of 9.19% in OSCs are achieved using hybrid Ag@SiO2NP–AgNW films. These are the highest values reported to date for optoelectronic devices based on AgNW electrodes. This work provides a new design platform to fabricate high-performance OODs, which can be further explored in various plasmonic and optoelectronic devices.