Incorporation of SiO 2 dielectric nanoparticles for performance enhancement in P3HT:PCBM inverted organic solar cells

Interface engineering through electron transport layer modification for high efficiency organic solar cells

“…As a result, the second semicircle which is generally observed in P3HT:PCBM OSC and corresponds to the charge transport is absent. 6,8,9 Therefore, Nyquist plot for PTB7-Th:PCBM OSC can be tted by a simple circuit shown in the Fig. S4 † which consists of a recombination resistance (R rec ) and the chemical capacitance (C m ) along with the series resistance due to contact and wires (R s ).…”

“…This includes designing and developing new donor and/or acceptor molecules having wide absorption spectra and/or employing various aspects of device and interface engineering such as use of solvent additives for photoactive layer processing, incorporation of metals, dielectric and/or semiconducting nanoparticles (NPs) in the photoactive layer, use of buffer layers like electron and/or hole transport layers, etc. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] It has been demonstrated in the past that the careful selection of electron and/or hole transport layers can improve the PCE by 2-3% for the same donor:acceptor bulk-heterojunction system. [12][13][14][15][16][17] Till date several types of material and/or their nanocomposites have been used as an electron transport layers (ETLs).…”

In Situ Growth of Metal Sulfide Nanocrystals in Poly(3-hexylthiophene): [6,6]-Phenyl C61-Butyric Acid Methyl Ester Films for Inverted Hybrid Solar Cells with Enhanced Photocurrent

“…A typical HSC is based on the bulk heterojunction concept in which a blend of organic materials and inorganic nanoparticles active layer sandwiched between two charge collecting electrodes [ 5 – 7 ]. To date, a wide range of organic materials, such as low band gap conjugated polymers [ 7 ], along with many inorganic materials, including metal nanomaterials (Ag, Au) [ 8 , 9 ], silicon [ 10 , 11 ], metal oxide nanoparticles (ZnO, TiO 2 ) [ 12 – 14 ], silicon dioxide nanoparticles (SiO 2 ) [ 15 ], cadmium compounds (CdS, CdSe, CdTe) [ 16 – 18 ], low band gap nanoparticles (PbS, PbSe, Sb 2 S 3 ,Cu 2 S, SnS 2 , CuInS 2 , FeS 2 ) [ 19 – 25 ], and so on, have been applied as the active layer in HSCs.…”

Efficient light trapping and interface engineering for performance enhancement in PTB7-Th: PC70BM organic solar cells

“…Some of the approaches of device engineering involve use of different combinations of electron and/or hole transport layers, solvent additives, incorporation of metal, dielectric and/or semiconducting nanoparticles (NPs), etc. [17][18][19][20][21][22] These modifications have been proved beneficial to enhance the device performance. However, this increase in PCE is limited due to various factors such as poor quality of interface between ETL/HTL and active layer, alteration in the active layer morphology due to incorporation of metal, dielectric and/or semiconducting nanoparticles (NPs).…”

“…Further, if their concentration is increased beyond the optimized concentration, they will occupy more volume fraction of active layer and therefore the probability of scattered photon getting absorbed again gets decreased. [19,20] Both these issues related to incorporation of NPs restrict the improvement in performance. Thus, it is necessary to employ non-destructive efficient light trapping technique which will not alter or modify the active layer and will not have trap centres.…”