Photovoltaic Properties of Polyanilinecopoly( butyl acrylate/vinyl acetate) Composite

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the fabrication of photovoltaic devices using polymeric materials. Polyaniline and its composites with other polymers are promising candidates for industrial application of conducting polymers. In this study the photoelectrochemical behaviour of the novel conductive polyanilinecopoly( butyl acrylate/vinyl acetate), (PAn-poly(BuAIVAc)), composite has been investigated using linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) measurements. PAn-copoly(BuNVAc)) films, containing 40% polyaniline, were sprayed on indium-doped tin-oxide (ITO) coated flexible plastic sheets, as working electrode, using a simple spraying method; a Pt coated ITO coated glass was used as counter electrode and the electrolyte as a liquid electrolyte containing 13-/1- redox couple sandwiched between them. The photovoltaic parameters, including energy conversion efficiency (ECE%), fill factor (FF), open circuit voltage (Voe) and short circuit current (Ise) were obtained from current-voltage (I-V) curves. The cells were prepared using different composite film thicknesses from 10 to 40 11m. The best energy conversion efficiency (ECE%) was obtained about 0.115% for a cell prepared with composite film thickness of 30 11m for which Voe =-140 mY, Ise= 22 I1Acm-2 and FF= 0.22 were obtained. The effect of composite film thickness and illumination time on photovoltages and photocurrents were investigated. It was observed that the photovoltages and photocurrents reached a maximum value at the 20 th minute.