Thickness and concentration effect of P3HT in P3HT:graphene nanocomposites based bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest towards organic solar cells after the discovery of conjugated polymer and bulk-heterojunction concept. Eventhough organic solar cells are less expensive than inorganic solar cells but the power conversion energy is still considered low. The main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of the P3HT’s thickness and concentration towards the efficiency of the P3HT:Graphene solar cells. A simulation software that is specialize for photovoltaic called SCAPS is used in this research to simulate the effect on the solar cells. The solar cell’s structure will be drawn inside the simulation and the parameters for each layers is inserted. The result such as the open circuit voltage (Voc), short circuit current density (Jsc), fill factor (FF) and efficiency (η) will be calculated by the software and all the results will be put into one graph. P3HT’s thickness of 100 nm and concentration of 1×1016 cm−3 has the best overall results with an open circuit voltage (Voc) of 4.55 V, short circuit current density (Jsc) of 16.76 mA/cm2, fill factor (FF) of 19.70 % and efficiency (η) about 15.03 %. The conclusions from the results is that the thicker the active layer and the more higher the concentration, the higher the efficiency of the solar cells.