Effect of geometric lattice design on optical/electrical properties of transparent silver grid for organic solar cells

Silver (Ag) grid transparent electrode is one of the most promising transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) to replace conventional indium tin oxide (ITO). We systematically investigate an effect of geometric lattice modifications on optical and electrical properties of Ag grid electrode. The reference Ag grid with 5 μm width and 100 μm pitch (duty of 0.05) prepared by conventional photo-lithography and lift-off processes shows the sheet resistance of 13.27 Ω/sq, transmittance of 81.1%, and resultant figure of merit (FOM) of 129.05. Three different modified Ag grid electrodes with stripe added-mesh (SAM), triangle-added mesh (TAM), and diagonal-added mesh (DAM) are suggested to improve optical and electrical properties. Although all three of SAM, TAM, and DAM Ag grid electrodes exhibit the lower transmittance values of about 72 - 77%, they showed much decreased sheet resistance of 6 - 8 Ω/sq. As a result, all of the lattice-modified Ag grid electrodes display significant improvement of FOM and the highest value of 171.14 is obtained from DAM Ag grid, which is comparable to that of conventional ITO electrode (175.46). Also, the feasibility of DAM Ag gird electrode for use in organic solar cell is confirmed by finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations. Unlike a conventional ITO electrode, DAM Ag grid electrode can induce light scattering and trapping due to the diffuse transmission that compensates for the loss in optical transparency, resulting in comparable light absorption in the photo active layer of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT): [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC₆₀BM). P3HT:PC₆₀BM based OSCs with the DAM Ag grid electrode were fabricated, which also showed the potential for ITO-free transparent electrode.