Abstract
Conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) is gaining technological importance for the fabrication of organic and organic–inorganic heterostructure devices. The conductivity of PEDOT:PSS can be improved by the addition of co-solvents. Here, we show that the simple addition of a suitable wt% of a co-solvent, either ethylene glycol (EG) or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), in PEDOT:PSS can significantly enhance the performance of hybrid solar cells. We provide a morphological model to explain the influence of the co-solvents in PEDOT:PSS, in which the co-solvent modifies the internal crystalline ordering of individual PEDOT nanocrystals that increases the crystal size and forms closely packed nanocrystals, and it also facilitates rearrangement of PSS that reduces its surface chain networks to enhance the polymer conductivity and hybrid solar cell properties. A hybrid solar cell made of EG 7 wt% modified PEDOT:PSS on planar Si exhibits an exceptionally high power conversion efficiency exceeding 12% for the first time.
Highlights
Conducting polymers have gained immense interest because of their potential use in low-cost, lightweight, exible organic semiconductor devices.[1,2] Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) is the most studied conducting polymer because of its p-type conductivity, higher light transmittance, and its availability as an aqueous dispersion, which make easy device processability with potential applications in photovoltaic and light-emitting diodes.[2,3,4] The aqueous dispersion of PEDOT is obtained with the addition of PSS during its synthesis
We show that the simple addition of a suitable wt% of a co-solvent, either ethylene glycol (EG) or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), in PEDOT:PSS can significantly enhance the performance of hybrid solar cells
We provide a morphological model to explain the influence of the co-solvents in PEDOT:PSS, in which the co-solvent modifies the internal crystalline ordering of individual PEDOT nanocrystals that increases the crystal size and forms closely packed nanocrystals, and it facilitates rearrangement of PSS that reduces its surface chain networks to enhance the polymer conductivity and hybrid solar cell properties
Summary
PEDOT:PSS has been widely studied for low-cost solar cell fabrication by spin-coating the polymer on an n-type Si substrate.[16,17,18,19,20,21] Solar cell fabrication on planar Si is of great interest because of the cost-effective and less complex fabrication steps, in comparison with the fabrication on structured Si surfaces. Better understanding of each of these effects is required to elucidate the causes for the large discrepancy in the PCEs, which helps to build high-efficiency hybrid solar cells. We report that the addition of two commonly used cosolvents, DMSO and EG, can signi cantly change the morphological and nanostructural properties of PEDOT:PSS, and we evaluate their effects on the resulting hybrid solar cell properties. We demonstrate an efficiency improvement from 2.4% for a solar cell fabricated on planar Si substrates with PEDOT:PSS (PH1000) with no co-solvent addition to 12% for a solar cell prepared with 7 wt% EG co-solvent addition, which is the highest efficiency reported to date for this type of solar cells
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