Solar cells fabricated from composites of conjugated polymers with nanostructured metal oxides are gaining interest on account of the stability, low cost and electron transport properties of metal oxides. Zinc oxide (ZnO)/polymer solar cells are promising compared to other metal oxide/polymer combinations, on account of the possibility of low temperature synthesis, as well as the potential for controlling interface morphology through simple processing from solution. Here, we focus on the effect of surface morphology of ZnO films on photovoltaic device performance. We have successfully grown ZnO nanorods standing almost perpendicular to the electrodes on a flat, dense ZnO "backing" layer. We studied structures consisting of a conjugated polymer in contact with three different types of ZnO layer: a flat ZnO backing layer alone; ZnO nanorods on a ZnO backing layer; and ZnO nanoparticles on a ZnO backing layer. We use scanning electron microscopy, steady state and transient absorption spectroscopies and photovoltaic device measurements to study the morphology, charge separation and recombination behaviour and device performance of the three types of structures. We find that charge recombination in the structures containing vertically aligned ZnO nanorods is remarkably slow, with a half life of over 1 ms, over two orders of magnitude slower than for randomly oriented ZnO nanoparticles. A photovoltaic device based on the nanorod structure which has been treated with an ambiphilic dye before deposition of poly(3-hexyl thiophene) (P3HT) polymer shows a power conversion efficiency over four times greater than for a similar device based on the nanoparticle structure. The best ZnO nanorods: P3HT device yields a short circuit current density of 2 mAcm-2 under AM1.5 illumination (100mWcm-2) and peak external quantum efficiency over 14%, resulting in a power conversion efficiency of 0.20%.
This study focuses on systems consisting of high hole-mobility MEHPPV based polymers or a fluorene-bithiophene co-polymer in contact with different nanocrystalline TiO2 films. We use photoluminescence quenching, time of flight mobility measurements and optical spectroscopy to characterize the exciton transport, charge transport and light harvesting properties, respectively, of the polymers, and correlate these material properties with photovoltaic device performance. We find that the polymer properties with greatest influence on device efficiency are the polymer exciton diffusion length and absorption range, followed by the hole mobility. We have also studied the photovoltaic performance of these TiO2/polymer devices as a function of active layer thickness. Device performances are significantly improved by introducing a PEDOT layer between the polymer and the top Au electrode and by reducing the thickness of the active layers. The optimized devices have peak external quantum efficiencies ≈ 40 % at the polymer's maximum absorption wavelength and yield short circuit current densities ≥ 2 mA cm-2 for air mass (AM) 1.5 conditions (100 mW cm-2, 1 sun). The AM 1.5 open circuit voltage reaches 0.64 V and the fill factor 0.43, resulting in an overall power conversion efficiency of 0.58 %.
We study the charge recombination kinetics and photovoltaic performance of composites of poly (9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-bithiophene) polymer with nanocrystalline TiO2. Transient optical spectroscopy confirms that photoexcitation of the polymer leads to electron transfer to the TiO2 and indicates that charge recombination is slow with a half-time of 100 μs to 10ms. Polymer penetration into thick porous TiO2 layers is improved by melt-processing and treatment of the TiO2 surface. We study the photovoltaic characteristics of devices with different layer thickness and interface morphology. Quantum efficiency (QE) of all devices is increased by reducing the TiO2 and polymer layer thickness. Inserting a thin porous TiO2 layer in to a thin bi-layer device increases the QE by a factor of five. The improved device shows peak QE and monochromatic power conversion efficiencies of over 11% and 1% at 440nm respectively. The device produced a short-circuit current density of 300μAcm-2, a fill factor of 0.24 and an open-circuit voltage of 0.8V under AM1.5 illumination. The fill factor is increased from 0.24 to 0.40 by introducing an additional dip-coating layer and overall power conversion efficiency is increased by 50%. However, the device produced degraded current-voltage characteristics. We investigate this using an alternative polymers and different top contact metals.
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