Metal–organic framework nanosheets for enhanced performance of organic photovoltaic cells

Kezia Sasitharan,Jenny Clark,Jonathan A Foster,Naoum Vaenas,David G Lidzey,Ahmed Iraqi,David G Bossanyi,Andrew J Parnell

doi:10.1039/c9ta12313j

Abstract

Metal–organic framework nanosheets (MONs) are incorporated into the active layer of bulk heterojunction polymer–fullerene solar cells for the first time, resulting in an almost doubling of power conversion efficiency.

Highlights

Two-dimensional nanomaterials such as graphene hold enormous potential for use in advanced electronics, energy, separation and composite materials applications.[1,2,3] the simple chemical composition of many of these materials mean it can be difficult to optimise them for many applications
Liquid exfoliation is used to synthesize ultrathin zinc-porphyrin based Metal–organic framework nanosheets (MONs) with electronic and optical properties ideally suited for incorporation into a polythiophene–fullerene (P3HT–phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM)) organic solar cell
It is worth noting that the MONs produced by our simple and scalable approach are thinner and have smaller lateral dimensions than those typically obtained from TCPP with Zinc and other metal ions (Cu, Co, Cd) including assembly at liquid interfaces,[59,60,62] intercalation of ligands[63] and surfactant assisted synthesis.[13]

Summary

Introduction

Two-dimensional nanomaterials such as graphene hold enormous potential for use in advanced electronics, energy, separation and composite materials applications.[1,2,3] the simple chemical composition of many of these materials mean it can be difficult to optimise them for many applications. MONs have already shown signi cant promise for use in a variety of separation,[8,9] catalysis,[10,11] sensing[9,12,13,14] and electronics applications.[15,16,17,18,19]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion