Simple and green route for fabrication of a nanostructured of the graphene‐Fe3O4@PANI for the photovoltaic activity

Abstract

In this work, for the first time, Gr (graphene)|Fe3O4@PANI nanocomposite was synthesized from graphite, aniline-HCl and FeCl3.6H2O via a simple in-situ and green route as the active layer for photovoltaic application. The proposed nanocomposite was characterized by FT-IR, SEM, TEM, UV-vis spectroscopy, XRD technique, and then the thermal, magnetic, electrochemical, and photovoltaic properties investigated. The energy gap was calculated, and it is noticed that the optical band gap of nanocomposite fallows an indirect transition, arising from a strong spin-orbit coupling created by Fe3O4 in the Gr|Fe3O4@PANI nanocomposite. Next, polymer solar cell (PSC) based on this nanocomposite was fabricated with a simple device structure of FTO│TiO2│Gr|Fe3O4@PANI│Al. The photovoltaic properties of the cells have been evaluated under AM 1.5G illumination at 60 mW/cm2 with a solar simulator. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.81% was observed with a short circuit current (Jsc) of 4.14 mA/cm2, an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.71 V, which indicates this kind of conjugated polymer should be a promising material in the application of polymer solar cells.