Abstract
The need for clean, inexpensive and renewable energy has increasingly turned research attention towards polymer photovoltaic cells. However, the performance efficiency of these devices is still low in comparison with silicon-based devices. The recent introduction of new materials and processing techniques has resulted in a remarkable increase in power-conversion efficiency, with a value above 10%. Controlling the interpenetrating network morphology is a key factor in obtaining devices with improved performance. This review focuses on the influence of controlled nanoscale morphology on the overall performance of bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic cells. Strategies such as the use of solvents, solvent annealing, polymer nanowires (NWs), and donor–acceptor (D–A) blend ratios employed to control the active-layer morphologies are all discussed.
Highlights
The rapid growth in the human population is having an increasing impact on global energy consumption [1]
The overall efficiency of organic photovoltaic devices (OPVs) depends predominantly on the active-layer morphology [16,17,18], which consists of photon-trapping donor and acceptor materials that lead to the formation of excitons
The basic overall design of OPVs features two polar terminals (Figure 1): the negative electrode, which is usually made of metals with low work function such as aluminium and the positive electrode which is typically made from transparent indium-doped tin oxide (ITO)
Summary
The rapid growth in the human population is having an increasing impact on global energy consumption [1]. Silicon-based solar cells and other inorganic types of photovoltaic cells that currently dominate [6] the solar-cell market because of their higher power-conversion efficiency (PCE) are expensive. The cost of production of the photon absorber in silicon-based solar cells is almost half of the total cost [7,8,9]. Alongside other challenges, improving the PCE is a significant one in the fabrication of organic photovoltaic devices (OPVs) [11,12,13]. The overall efficiency of OPVs depends predominantly on the active-layer morphology [16,17,18], which consists of photon-trapping donor and acceptor materials that lead to the formation of excitons. Understanding the roles of controlled nanoscale morphology in the optimal performance of photovoltaic cells is the subject of this brief review. Some of the current methods employed to control, as well as to improve, the morphology of the active layer are mentioned in detail
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