Organic solar cells with a blend of two solution processable electron acceptors, C60(CN)2 and PCBM

Author

Koppolu, Vaishali R. ; Gupta, Mool C. ; Bagienski, Will ; Shen, Yang ; Shu, Chunying ; Gibson, Harry W. ; Dorn, Harry C.

Author_Institution

Charles Brown Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

7-12 June 2009

Abstract

Organic solar cells based on bulk heterojunction (BHJ) structure fabricated by blending conjugated polymers with fullerenes have resulted in great improvements in the energy conversion efficiencies in recent years. PCBM ([6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester), a fullerene derivative, has been extensively investigated as a solution processable electron acceptor for BHJ photovoltaic devices blended with conjugate polymers like P3HT [poly(3-hexylthiophene)]. We investigated a novel solution processable organic semiconductor, C₆₀(CN)₂ as an electron acceptor and blends with PCBM for BJH photovoltaic applications . The effect of ratios of PCBM and C₆₀(CN)₂ on the optical absorption spectra, open circuit voltage, short circuit current, fill factor, efficiency and morphology is investigated. Thermal annealing has shown a significant improvement in the device performance.

Keywords

annealing; conducting polymers; fullerene compounds; organic semiconductors; polymer blends; semiconductor heterojunctions; solar cells; BHJ photovoltaic devices; C₆₀(CN)₂; P3HT; PCBM; [6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester; bulk heterojunction structure; conjugated polymer blending; energy conversion efficiency; fill factor; fullerene derivative; open circuit voltage; optical absorption spectra; organic solar cells; poly(3-hexylthiophene); short circuit current; solution processable electron acceptor; solution processable organic semiconductor; thermal annealing; Absorption; Circuits; Electron optics; Energy conversion; Heterojunctions; Organic semiconductors; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; Polymers; Solar power generation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2009 34th IEEE

Conference_Location

Philadelphia, PA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2949-3

Electronic_ISBN

0160-8371

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2009.5411243

Filename

5411243