Multispectral Plasmon of Anisotropic Core-shell Gold Nanorods@SiO2: Dual-band Absorption Enhancement with Coupling Dye Molecules

Direct evidence of effects of surface plasmon resonance(SPR) of gold nanorods(GNRs) on dual-band light absorption enhancement with coupling dye molecules was reported by introducing gold nanorod@SiO2 (GNR@SiO2) core-shell nanoparticles into a photoelectric conversion system. GNR with asymmetric shape had unusual anisotropic SPR[transversal surface plasmon resonance(TSPR) and longitudinal surface plasmon resonance(LSPR)]. The excellent SPR of GNR made it a promising candidate as enhancing light absorption material to increase power conversion efficiency(PCE). The PCE was improved nearly 17.2% upon incorporating GNRs, mostly due to the increase in J(sc), while V-oc and FF were unchanged. The improvement was mostly contributed by the SPR of the GNRs with coupling of N719. And there was also a complementary to N719 in visible light range. Therefore, SPR is an effective tool in improving the photocurrent and consequently enhancement of PCE. The TSPR and LSPR effects of GNRs on light harvesting were reflected in the increased monochromatic incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiency(IPCE). We also utilized finite-difference time-domain(FDTD) to investigate the light coupling of GNRs with TiO2. Compare to the base anode, the IPCE of optimized electrode showed significant improvement and peaks broadening at 500-600 nm and 610-710 nm. We got an increase in overall conversion efficiency from 6.4% to 7.5%.