Toward green solvent processable photovoltaic materials for polymer solar cells: the role of highly polar pendant groups in charge carrier transport and photovoltaic behavior

被引:159
作者
Duan, Chunhui [1 ]
Cai, Wanzhu [1 ]
Hsu, Ben B. Y. [2 ]
Zhong, Chengmei [1 ,2 ]
Zhang, Kai [1 ]
Liu, Chunchen [1 ]
Hu, Zhicheng [1 ]
Huang, Fei [1 ]
Bazan, Guillermo C. [1 ,2 ]
Heeger, Alan J. [2 ]
Cao, Yong [1 ]
机构
[1] S China Univ Technol, State Key Lab Luminescent Mat & Devices, Inst Polymer Optoelect Mat & Devices, Guangzhou 510640, Peoples R China
[2] Univ Calif Santa Barbara, Ctr Polymers & Organ Solids, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA
基金
中国博士后科学基金;
关键词
OPEN-CIRCUIT VOLTAGE; POWER CONVERSION EFFICIENCY; HIGH-PERFORMANCE; ELECTRON-INJECTION; WORK FUNCTION; CATHODE; TANDEM; LAYERS; DENSITY; AU;
D O I
10.1039/c3ee41838c
中图分类号
O6 [化学];
学科分类号
0703 ;
摘要
To develop environmentally friendly solvent processed high performance polymer solar cells (PSCs), an alcohol soluble narrow-band-gap conjugated polymer PCDTBT-N and an alcohol soluble C-70 fullerene derivative PC71BM-N, which were functionalized with pendant tertiary amino groups, were developed and used as active layers in PSCs and as buffer layers in metal-semiconductor interfaces. Though solar cells with active layers containing amino groups showed no photovoltaic properties regardless of the processing conditions, both PCDTBT-N and PC71BM-N performed well as buffer layers to improve electron collection in PSCs. Space charge limited current (SCLC), field effect transistor (FET) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) studies revealed that the amino groups act as hole traps and disable hole transport in active layers. Moreover, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) indicates electronic structure changes and Fermi level shifts upon complexation of amino groups and the fullerene core, which may diminish the electron-accepting capacity of fullerenes, and may potentially provide a different kind of hole trap in the devices. The underlying mechanisms of the puzzling behavior of PCDTBT-N and PC71-BM-N in different layers of PSCs were studied by numerical simulation, which indicates that hole traps distributed in the BHJ layer reduce device performance, conversely hole traps concentrated near the metal electrode can improve device performance. Besides, the formation of an amino group: C-70 complex is another important cause of the performance improvements of the resulting solar cells using PCDTBT-N and PC71BM-N as buffer layers, due to the reduced transport loss for efficient electron collection through the n-doping of PC71BM at the interface of the buffer layer and the active layer.
引用
收藏
页码:3022 / 3034
页数:13
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