Browsing by Author "Peng, B."
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Item Open Access Effect of shell thickness on small-molecule solar cells enhanced by dual plasmonic gold-silica nanorods(AIP Publishing, 2014-09-19) Xu, X.; Du, Q.; Peng, B.; Xiong, Q.; Hong, L.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Wong, T. K. S.; Kyaw, A. K. K.; Sun, X. W.Chemically synthesized gold (Au)-silica nanorods with shell thickness of 0 nm-10 nm were incorporated into the bulk heterojunction of a small-molecule organic solar cell. At optimal (1 wt. %) concentration, Au-silica nanorods with 5 nm shell thickness resulted in the highest power conversion efficiency of 8.29% with 27% relative enhancement. Finite-difference time-domain simulation shows that the localized electric field intensity at the silica shell-organic layer interface decreases with the increase of shell thickness for both 520 nm and 680 nm resonance peaks. The enhanced haze factor for transmission/reflection of the organic layer is not strongly dependent on the shell thickness. Bare Au nanorods yielded the lowest efficiency of 5.4%. Light intensity dependence measurement of the short-circuit current density shows that the silica shell reduces bimolecular recombination at the Au surface. As a result, both localized field intensity and light scattering are involved in efficiency enhancement for an optimized shell thickness of 5 nm.Item Open Access Enhanced efficiency of solution-processed small-molecule solar cells upon incorporation of gold nanospheres and nanorods into organic layers(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014) Xu, X.; Kyaw, A. K. K.; Peng, B.; Du, Q.; Hong, L.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Wong, T. K. S.; Xiong, Q.; Sun, X. W.The significantly enhanced performance upon incorporation of Au nanoparticles in solution-processed small-molecule solar cells is demonstrated. Simultaneously incorporating Au nanospheres into the hole transport layer and Au-silica nanorods into the active layer results in superior broadband absorption improvement in the device with a power conversion efficiency of 8.72% with 31% enhancement.Item Open Access Fluorophore-doped core-multishell spherical plasmonic nanocavities: resonant energy transfer towards a loss compensation(American Chemical Society, 2012-06-12) Peng, B.; Zhang, Q.; Liu, X.; Ji Y.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Huan, C. H. A.; Sum, T. C.; Wiong, Q.Plasmonics exhibits the potential to break the diffraction limit and bridge the gap between electronics and photonics by routing and manipulating light at the nanoscale. However, the inherent and strong energy dissipation present in metals, especially in the near-infrared and visible wavelength ranges, significantly hampersthe applications in nanophotonics. Therefore, it is amajor challengetomitigatethe losses. One way to compensate the losses is to incorporate gain media into plasmonics. Here, we experimentally show that the incorporation of gain material into a local surface plasmonic system (Au/silica/silica dye core multishell nanoparticles) leads to a resonant energy transfer from the gain media to the plasmon. The optimized conditions for the largest loss compensation are reported. Both the coupling distance and the spectral overlap arethe key factorsto determinetheresulting energy transfer. Theinterplay of these factors leadsto a non-monotonous photoluminescence dependence as a function of the silica spacer shell thickness. Nonradiativetransferrate is increased by morethan 3 orders of magnitude attheresonant condition, which is key evidence of the strongest coupling occurring between the plasmon and the gain material.Item Open Access Influence of gold-silica nanoparticles on the performance of small-molecule bulk heterojunction solar cells(Elsevier BV * North-Holland, 2015) Xu, X.; Kyaw, A. K. K.; Peng, B.; Xiong, Q.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Wang Y.; Wong, T. K. S.; Sun, X. W.Light trapping by gold (Au)-silica nanospheres and nanorods embedded in the active layer of small-molecule (SM) organic solar cell has been systematically compared. Nanorod significantly outperforms nanosphere because of more light scattering and higher quality factor for localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) triggered by nanorods. The optimum concentration of nanorod was characterized by charge carrier transport and morphology of the active layers. At optimum nanorod concentration, almost no change in the morphology of the active layer reveals that LSPR and scattering effects rather than the morphology are mainly responsible for the enhanced power conversion efficiency. In addition, the preliminary lifetime studies of the SM solar cells with and without Au-silica nanorods were conducted by measuring the current density-voltage characteristics over 20 days. The results show that plasmonic device with nanorods has no adverse impact on the device stabilityItem Open Access Quantum dots on vertically aligned gold nanorod monolayer: plasmon enhanced fluorescence(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014) Peng, B.; Li, Z.; Mutlugun, E.; Martinez, P. L. H.; Li, D.; Zhang, Q.; Gao, Y.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Xiong, Q.CTAB-coated Au nanorods were directly self-assembled into a vertically aligned monolayer with highly uniform hot spots through a simple but robust approach. By coupling with CdSe/ZnS quantum dots, a maximum enhancement of 10.4 is achieved due to: increased excitation transition rate, radiative rate, and coupling efficiency of emission to the far field.Item Open Access Vertically aligned gold nanorod monolayer on arbitrary substrates: self-assembly and femtomolar detection of food contaminants(American Chemical Society, 2013) Peng, B.; Li, G.; Li, D.; Dodson, S.; Zhang, Q.; Zhang, J.; Lee, Y. H.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Ling, X. Y.; Xiong, Q.Public attention to the food scandals raises an urgent need to develop effective and reliable methods to detect food contaminants. The current prevailing detections are primarily based upon liquid chromatography, mass spectroscopy, or colorimetric methods, which usually require sophisticated and time-consuming steps or sample preparation. Herein, we develop a facile strategy to assemble the vertically aligned monolayer of Au nanorods with a nominal 0.8 nm gap distance and demonstrate their applications in the rapid detection of plasticizers and melamine contamination at femtomolar level by surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy (SERS). The SERS signals of plasticizers are sensitive down to 0.9 fM concentrations in orange juices. It is the lowest detection limit reported to date, which is 7 orders of magnitude lower than the standard of United States (6 ppb). The highly organized vertical arrays generate the reproducible "SERS-active sites" and can be achieved on arbitrary substrates, ranging from silicon, gallium nitride, glass to flexible poly(ethylene naphthalate) substrates.