Abstract
Construction of ordered electron acceptors is a feasible way to solve the issue of phase separation in polymer solar cells by using vertically-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs). However, the inert charge transfer between conducting polymer and ZnO limits the performance enhancement of this type of hybrid solar cells. In this work, a fullerene derivative named C60 pyrrolidine tris-acid is used to modify the interface of ZnO/poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). Results indicate that the C60 modification passivates the surface defects of ZnO and improves its intrinsic fluorescence. The quenching efficiency of P3HT photoluminescence is enhanced upon C60 functionalization, suggesting a more efficient charge transfer occurs across the modified P3HT/ZnO interface. Furthermore, the fullerene modified hybrid solar cell based on P3HT/ZnO NRAs displays substantially-enhanced performance as compared to the unmodified one and the devices with other modifiers, which is contributed to retarded recombination and enhanced exciton separation as evidenced by electrochemical impedance spectra. Therefore, fullerene passivation is a promising method to ameliorate the connection between conjugated polymers and metal oxides, and is applicable in diverse areas, such as solar cells, transistors, and light-emitting dioxides.
Highlights
0.4 M monoethanolamine and 0.4 M zinc acetate dihydrate was sequentially added into 25 mL 2-methoxyethanol, followed by vigorously stirring at 60 ◦ C in a water bath for 30 min; the resultant solution was spin-coated onto the FTO substrates at 3000 rpm for 20 s; the deposited films on substrates were annealed at 200 ◦ C for 10 min and 500 ◦ C for
The nano-morphology of the ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) is tunable by controlling the growth durations as shown in Figure 1c, which is flexible for further applications in polymer solar cells
Vertically-aligned ZnO NRAs with tunable nano-sizes are synthesized by a hydrothermal reaction to be hybridized with the conjugated polymer P3HT
Summary
Polymer solar cells have recently attracted extensive attentions in the fields of portable electronics, wearable devices, building-integrated electricity supply and solar-powered airplane, due to their high efficiencies, low cost, light weight, flexibility and compatibility with roll-to-roll manufacturing [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Recent studies mainly concentrate on developing new electron donors and acceptors, delicately controlling the nano-morphology and optimizing the device architectures, etc., enabling the efficiencies over 11% [11,12,13,14,15,16]. High-efficiency polymer photovoltaic (PV) devices rely on three-dimensional interconnected networks of the donor (conducting polymers) and the acceptor (fullerene derivatives), with the sizes of phase separation within the exciton diffusion length (
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