Effect of mixed solvents on PCDTBT:PC70BM based solar cells

Alem, Salima; Chu, Ta−Ya; Tse, S. C.; Wakim, Salem; Lü, Jianping; Movileanu, Raluca; Tao, Ye; Bélanger, Francis; Désilets, Denis; Beaupré, Serge; Leclerc, Mario; Rodman, Sheila; Waller, David; Gaudiana, Russell

doi:10.1016/j.orgel.2011.07.011

Cited by 82 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…3 Recently, there are major scientic efforts to understand and manipulate microstructural effects on the device performance. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Several methods have been developed to inuence the morphology and consequently the performance of OSCs, such as solution optimization, thermal annealing and solvent annealing. [4][5][6][7][8] Among all these methods, employing low volatile additives has become a well-accepted microstructure manipulation method, especially to the systems for which postprocessing treatments have been proven ineffective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling additive behavior to reveal an alternative morphology formation mechanism in polymer : fullerene bulk-heterojunctions

et al. 2016

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aOne of the most employed morphology optimization methods to design better performing organic photovoltaic devices is ink formulation engineering with additives. In this work, by employing a suboptimal host solvent mixture and 1,8-diiodooctane (DIO) as a very optimal solvent for both components in poly-thieno [3,2b]thiophene-diketopyrrolopyrrole-co-thiophene (DPP-TT-T)-based bulkheterojunctions (BHJ), an alternative, previously unknown mechanism of additive behavior on BHJ microstructure formation is presented. In situ characterization methods involving grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, white-light reflectometry, laser light scattering and photoluminescence during film drying reveal that the microstructure formation under the influence of DIO is led towards thermodynamic equilibrium during host solvent drying, and the kinetics of morphology formation (i.e. polymer crystallization, fullerene aggregation.) are controlled dominantly by the additive during its evaporation. Ex situ X-ray-based characterization methods, such as scanning transmission X-ray microspectroscopy (STXM) and resonant soft X-ray scattering (R-SoXS), additionally reveal that the microstructure of dried films favors smaller domain sizes with purer domains, smaller fullerene aggregates, bimodal polymer crystallization relative to the substrate and more face-on molecular orientation relative to the donor/acceptor interface, which at the end lead to better performing devices with power conversion efficiencies ranging from 1.25% to 4.68%.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling additive behavior to reveal an alternative morphology formation mechanism in polymer : fullerene bulk-heterojunctions

et al. 2016

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“…These different approaches tend to facilitate the formation of phase separated morphology with crystalline donor and acceptor domains, leading to improved photovoltaic device performance [13]. Among them, both mixed solvent system [18][19][20][21] and solvent annealing have received much attention because of their capability in controlling crystallinity, solubility, and miscibility of the donor and acceptor components as well as the domain size and the local composition distribution at the donor/acceptor (D/A) interface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative characterization of phase separation in the photoactive layer of polymer solar cells by the phase image of atomic force microscopy

et al. 2015

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“…The major challenges hindering the advance of organic solar cells are the short exciton migration distance, narrow light absorption, and low stability [2,[6][7][8]. Hence, plenty of efforts have been devoted to improving the device performance, such as incorporating second or third solvents (1, or chloroform (CF)) to optimize donor-acceptor morphology and thus minimizing the recombination rate [9][10][11][12], adding quantum dots (QDs) or nanoparticles to enhance the light absorption with a broader spectrum [13][14][15][16], or employing tandem structure to increase the open circuit voltage [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%