Design and Optimization of Polyaniline Polymer Based Solar Cell Doped with Nanoparticles

Renewable clean energy sources such as solar power have a decisive role to control the global warming issues. Advances in solar cell technology will facilitate the extracted energy of solar power which will lead to deliver clean energy and reduced fossil fuel consumption. An optimized polyaniline polymer based solar cell doped with TiO2 and metallic nanoparticles has been studied in this paper. Current-Voltage (I–V) characteristics indicate that a built-in electric field has been created at the nano-crystalline TiO2/polyaniline interface. Current-voltage characteristics as well as the efficiency of these solar cells have been studied theoretically and experimentally at the simulated solar irradiation. Results show that the applied nanoparticles lead to an increase in the efficiency of the cells compared with other polymer based solar cells. The resulted energy conversion efficiency is about 6% at moderate light intensities which is higher than other similar polymer solar cells. Simulation results also show a higher efficiency for investigated solar cells.