Thermal Stabilisation of Polymer–Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Morphology for Efficient Photovoltaic Solar Cells
Lionel DerueOlivier J. DautelAurélien TournebizeMartin DreesHualong PanSébastien BerthumeyrieBertrand PavageauÉric CloutetSylvain ChambonLionel HirschAgnès RivatonPiétrick HudhommeAntonio FacchettiGuillaume Wantz
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Abstract:
A novel stable bisazide molecule that can freeze the bulk heterojunction morphology at its optimized layout by specifically bonding to fullerenes is reported. The concept is demonstrated with various polymers: fullerene derivatives systems enable highly thermally stable polymer solar cells.Keywords:
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The performance of organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells depends strongly on the nanoscale morphology formed by the donor and acceptor materials. However, the majority of device models for organic BHJ solar cells are based on an effective-medium formulation that does not capture details of the underlying morphology. In order to link more detailed models with effective-medium models, we derive a spatially smoothed formulation for organic BHJ solar cells based on volume-averaging of a mathematical model that considers charge carrier transport, generation, and recombination in both the acceptor and donor phases. The formulation captures two essential morphological characteristics of the organic BHJ layer that are not found in existing effective-medium models: the effective interfacial area and the volume fraction ratio between donor and acceptor materials. In addition, effective charge carrier mobilities and diffusion coefficients are identified, which are determined for an “ideal” interpenetrated BHJ solar cell.
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Organic photovoltaic (OPV) technology has the potential to greatly lower the cost of solar cell fabrication by enabling ink-based deposition of active layers. In bulk heterojunction (BHJ) OPV devices, the power conversion efficiency critically depends on the distribution of the polymer absorber and the fullerene electron acceptor (e.g., the blend morphology). Our program develops measurement methods to probe the structure of OPV devices, with a focus on the morphology of the BHJ layer.
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Abstract Organic solar cells have the ability to transform solar energy efficiently and have a promising energy balance. Producing these cells is economical and makes use of methods of printing using inks built on solvents that are well-matched with a variety of cheap materials like flexible plastic or paper. The primary materials used to manufacture organic solar cells include carbon-based semiconductors, which are good light absorbers and efficient charge generators. In this article, we review previous research of interest based on morphology of polymer blends used in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells and introduce their basic principles. We further review computational models used in the analysis of surface behavior of polymer blends in BHJ as well as the trends in the field of polymer surface science as applied to BHJ photovoltaics. We also give in brief, the opportunities and challenges in the area of polymer blends on BHJ organic solar cells.
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We have studied organic solar cells composed of PffBT4T-2OD as electron donor and three different electron accepting fullerenes, in order to understand the impact of different fullerenes on the morphology and efficiency of the corresponding photovoltaic devices.
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We compare the solar cell performance of several polymers with the conventional electron acceptor phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) to fullerenes with one to three indene adducts. We find that the multiadduct fullerenes with lower electron affinity improve the efficiency of the solar cells only when they do not intercalate between the polymer side chains. When they intercalate between the side chains, the multiadduct fullerenes substantially reduce solar cell photocurrent. We use X-ray diffraction to determine how the fullerenes are arranged within crystals of poly-(2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) (PBTTT) and suggest that poor electron transport in the molecularly mixed domains may account for the reduced solar cell performance of blends with fullerene intercalation.
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Morphology, the spatial distribution of traps, interdomain connectivity, and phase separation of the active layer play a critical role in the performance of the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells (OSCs). In this work, we utilize the hopping transport model to simulate the effect of morphological and structural parameters on the diffusion coefficient and efficiency of the polymer-fullerene BHJ solar cells. In BHJ solar cells there are two distinct phases as electron transport material (acceptor) and hole transport material (donor). Here we try to create an almost realistic network containing P3HT polymer chains and PCBM clusters for simulating the charge transport in the active layer. The blend ratio of P3HT:PCBM polymers and alignment of these bicontinuous networks of active layer are considered here as the morphological parameter affecting the cell performance. The dependency of the charge transport on such morphological parameters is obtained in this study by using Monte Carlo continues time random walk simulations.
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