Abstract
Post-treatment processes improve the performance of organic photovoltaic devices by changing the microscopic morphology and configuration of the vertical phase separation in the active layer. Thermal annealing and solvent vapor (or chemical) treatment processes have been extensively used to improve the performance of bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. In this work we introduce a new post-treatment process which we apply only electrical voltage to the BHJ-OPV devices. We used the commercially available P3HT [Poly(3-hexylthiophene)] and PC61BM (Phenyl-C61-Butyric acid Methyl ester) photovoltaic materials as donor and acceptor, respectively. We monitored the voltage and current applied to the device to check for when the post-treatment process had been completed. This electrical treatment process is simpler and faster than other post-treatment methods, and the performance of the electrically treated solar cell is comparable to that of a reference (thermally annealed) device. Our results indicate that the proposed treatment process can be used efficiently to fabricate high-performance BHJ-OPV devices.
Highlights
P3HT [Poly(3-hexylthiophene)] and PC61BM (Phenyl-C61-Butyric acid Methyl ester) are the most commonly used donor and acceptor materials for organic photovoltaic (OPV), respectively
In this work we investigate the effect that electrical treatment with a forward bias electrical voltage has on the performance of P3HT:PC61BM system solar cells
We have introduced a new post-treatment method that uses an external electrical voltage
Summary
P3HT [Poly(3-hexylthiophene)] and PC61BM (Phenyl-C61-Butyric acid Methyl ester) are the most commonly used donor and acceptor materials for OPV, respectively. Experimental studies [including atomic force microscopy (AFM)[11,12], ultraviolet and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (UPS, XPS)[13,14], transmission electron microscopy (TEM)[12,15], grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS)[16,17], and small angle neutron scattering18] showed that both thermal annealing and solvent vapor treatment processes improve the morphology and vertical phase separation of OPV, which leads to a dramatic improvement in the performance of a P3HT:PC61BM bulk heterojunction system. We only applied an external electrical voltage to the solar cells for post-production treatment, and we were able to verify the completion of the electrical treatment process and achieved a slightly higher performance (or efficiency) than that with a thermally-annealed device with a much shorter processing time. This new process can be used for post-treatment of organic devices to improve their performance in a short period of time
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