Photo-active layers from non-stabilized P3HT:ICBA nanoparticles enable the fabrication of inverted organic solar cells from eco-friendly, alcoholic dispersions. Exhibiting power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) ≈4%, the devices are competitive to state-of-the-art P3HT:ICBA solar cells from chlorinated solvents. Upon thermal annealing, the short circuit current density and consequently the PCE of the inverted solar cells improve radically due to a more intimate contact of the nanoparticles and hence an enhanced charge carrier extraction.
A fullerene was covalently attached to a (dA)20 template that serves as structural scaffold to self-assemble an ordered and mixed array of ethynyl-pyrene- and ethynyl-Nile-red-nucleoside conjugates. Fluorescence spectroscopy revealed evidence for energy transfer between the two different chromophores. Moreover, fluorescence quenching is significantly enhanced by the attached fullerene in mixed assemblies of different chromophore ratios. This indicates exciton dissociation by electron transfer from the photo-generated exciton on the chromophore stack to the fullerene. The fullerene-DNA-conjugate was integrated as a photo-active layer in solar cells that showed charge-carrier generation in the spectral regime of all three components of the conjugate. This work clearly demonstrates that DNA is suitable as structural element for chromophore assemblies in future organic optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells.
Nanoparticle dispersions open up an ecofriendly route toward printable organic solar cells. They can be formed from a variety of organic semiconductors by using miniemulsions that employ surfactants to stabilize the nanoparticles in dispersion and to prevent aggregation. However, whenever surfactant-based nanoparticle dispersions have been used to fabricate solar cells, the reported performances remain moderate. In contrast, solar cells from nanoparticle dispersions formed by precipitation (without surfactants) can exhibit power conversion efficiencies close to those of state-of-the-art solar cells processed from blend solutions using chlorinated solvents. In this work, we use small-angle neutron scattering measurements and transient absorption spectroscopy to investigate why surfactant-free nanoparticles give rise to efficient organic solar cells. We show that surfactant-free nanoparticles comprise a uniform distribution of small semiconductor domains, similar to that of bulk-heterojunction films formed using traditional solvent processing. This observation differs from surfactant-based miniemulsion nanoparticles that typically exhibit core-shell structures. Hence, the surfactant-free nanoparticles already possess the optimum morphology for efficient energy conversion before they are assembled into the photoactive layer of a solar cell. This structural property underpins the superior performance of the solar cells containing surfactant-free nanoparticles and is an important design criterion for future nanoparticle inks.
The fabrication of organic solar cells with advanced multi-layer architectures from solution is often limited by the choice of solvents since most organic semiconductors dissolve in the same aromatic agents. In this work, we investigate multi-pass deposition of organic semiconductors from eco-friendly ethanol dispersion. Once applied, the nanoparticles are insoluble in the deposition agent, allowing for the application of further nanoparticulate layers and hence for building poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl):indene-C60 bisadduct absorber layers with vertically graded polymer and conversely graded fullerene concentration. Upon thermal annealing, we observe some degrees of polymer/fullerene interdiffusion by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy. Replacing the common bulk-heterojunction by such a graded photo-active layer yields an enhanced fill factor of the solar cell due to an improved charge carrier extraction, and consequently an overall power conversion efficiency beyond 4%. Wet processing of such advanced device architectures paves the way for a versatile, eco-friendly and industrially feasible future fabrication of organic solar cells with advanced multi-layer architectures.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.