LAUSR

In this work, we fabricated plasmonic organic bulk–heterojunction solar cells by inserting hydrophobic gold nanorods (GNRs) into the active layers. Power conversion efficiency was improved from 7.43% to 8.22% because the plasmonic effect of GNRs improved the light harvesting efficiency. Maximum exciton generation rate was increased from 1.35 × 10−26 to 1.51× 10−26m−3 s−1, and the electron mobility was also increased from 8.6 × 10−5 to 1.5× 10−4cm−2 V−1 s−1. As a result, the short circuit current density was improved from 15.5 to 16.7 mA cm−2—the dominant reason for performance enhancement. The open circuit voltage and fill factor were improved simultaneously. The plasmonic device showed a highest PCE of 8.43%, indicating that doping GNRs into active layers is a simple and effective way to fabricate high-performance organic solar cells. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 135, 45920.