Review—State-of-the-Art Organic Solar Cells based on Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene

Abstract

In the 21st century, photovoltaic (PV) is an emerging renewable energy source. According to its low production cost, organic solar cells (OSCs) exhibit huge potential in the commercialization market. Low-dimensional carbon nanomaterials with superb electronic, optical, mechanical properties have been proposed to serve as different functions in organic solar cells. In this paper, we systematically summarize the progress of carbon nanotube (CNT)- and graphene-based OSCs, including the photoactive, electrode and interfacial layers. It concludes that CNTs and graphene can play a crucial role in OSCs. Also, this review provides a summary and outlook on improving the performance of OSCs. At present, the device is in the direction of the hybrid system, high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and long lifetimes.

Design of room-temperature infrared photothermoelectric detectors based on CNT/PEDOT:PSS composites

“…In such a structure, numerous delocalized π-bond networks are relatively facile to produce because electrons will move more actively among different unhybridized orbitals. 12 When SWCNTs are inserted into the π-bonded conjugated PEDOT:PSS polymer, the interaction between SWCNTs and polymer chains changes the carrier density and creates more free delocalized carriers in PEDOT chains. 25 For the PTE mechanism, more delocalized carriers indicate a larger temperature gradient change because the lattice vibration usually remains unaffected, but photon-induced hot carriers are more easily changed.…”

“…11 As the two-dimensional star material, monolayer graphene possesses a zero-bandgap enabling broadband optical absorption and high carrier mobility enhancing the photoresponse. 12 The as-fabricated graphene-based PTE detectors can achieve a detectivity of 4.6 Â 10 5 Jones in a broadband range. 7 However, high-quality single-layer graphene has a high cost and complex mass fabrication.…”

Recent Applications of Carbon Nanotubes in Organic Solar Cells

“…A typical OSC is composed of the electrodes (cathode and anode), charge transport layers (electron transport layer (ETL) and hole transport layer (HTL)), and the photoactive layer, assembled in the conventional or inverted configurations, as presented elsewhere ( Muchuweni et al, 2020a ). In an OSC, photons from incident solar radiation are transmitted through the substrate, bottom electrode and charge transport layer, so that they reach the photoactive layer, where they are absorbed by the donor material, in which excitons, i.e., strongly bound electron-hole pairs, are generated ( Jeon et al, 2017 ; Ramasamy et al, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Kang et al, 2021 ) and localized owing to the large exciton binding energy in the polymer matrix ( Hatton et al, 2008 ). The photogenerated excitons subsequently diffuse within their limited diffusion distance to the interface between materials with dissimilar electron affinities and ionization potentials, i.e., between the donor-acceptor interface, where they are absolutely separated into free charge carriers after overcoming the binding energies ( Tessema Mola et al, 2018 ).…”

Anisotropic Photoluminescence of Poly(3-hexyl thiophene) and Their Composites with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Highly Separated in Metallic and Semiconducting Tubes

“…Much effort has been made in recent years regarding the fundamental properties of carbon nanoparticles such as carbon nanotubes and carbon quantum dots for applications in the field of energy storage, health and photovoltaic devices [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The applications of the composites based on poly(3-hexyl thiophene) (P3HT) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the photovoltaic devices [ 5 , 6 ] and solar cells [ 7 , 8 ] involved a better understanding of the synthesis protocols as well as the structure-properties relationship [ 9 ].…”