Issue 9, 2011
From the journal:

Energy & Environmental Science

Roles of thermally-induced vertical phase segregation and crystallization on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells

Hyeunseok Cheun,a   John D. Berrigan,b   Yinhua Zhou,a   Mathieu Fenoll,†a   Jaewon Shim,a   Canek Fuentes-Hernandez,a   Kenneth H. Sandhageb  and  Bernard Kippelen*a  

* Corresponding authors

a School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
E-mail: kippelen@gatech.edu

b School of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Abstract

Brief 160 °C annealing treatments dramatically enhanced the performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells with an ITO/ZnO/P3HT:PCBM/MoO3/Ag structure. The influence of such treatments on cell performance has been correlated to vertical phase segregation and crystallization within the photoactive layer of such cells. The photoactive layer, comprised of a mixture of P3HT and PCBM deposited on ZnO, was annealed for 10–30 min at 160 °C. Depth profiling with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that such annealing resulted in enrichment of the P3HT concentration near the ZnO layer, particularly after 20 and 30 min of annealing. Crystallization of P3HT was detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses after 10 to 30 min of such annealing, with little difference in the extent of crystallization detected over this time frame. It was found that vertical segregation does not seem to play a role as significant as that of crystallization on cell performance.

Graphical abstract: Roles of thermally-induced vertical phase segregation and crystallization on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells

  • This article is part of the themed collection: Solar energy
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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1EE01316E
Article type
Paper
Submitted
18 Mar 2011
Accepted
10 Jun 2011
First published
08 Jul 2011

Energy Environ. Sci., 2011,4, 3456-3460

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Roles of thermally-induced vertical phase segregation and crystallization on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells

H. Cheun, J. D. Berrigan, Y. Zhou, M. Fenoll, J. Shim, C. Fuentes-Hernandez, K. H. Sandhage and B. Kippelen, Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, 4, 3456 DOI: 10.1039/C1EE01316E

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