TY - JOUR
T1 - Tailoring nanoscale morphology of polymer:fullerene blends using electrostatic field
AU - Elshobaki, Moneim
AU - Gebhardt, Ryan
AU - Carr, John
AU - Lindemann, William
AU - Wang, Wenjie
AU - Grieser, Eric
AU - Venkatesan, Swaminathan
AU - Ngo, Evan
AU - Bhattacharjee, Ujjal
AU - Strzalka, Joseph
AU - Jiang, Zhang
AU - Qiao, Qiquan
AU - Petrich, Jacob
AU - Vaknin, David
AU - Chaudhary, Sumit
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2017/1/25
Y1 - 2017/1/25
N2 - To tailor the nanomorphology in polymer/fullerene blends, we study the effect of electrostatic field (Efield) on the solidification of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2, 5-diyl) (P3HT):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC60BM) bulk heterojunction (BHJ). In addition to control; wet P3HT:PC60BM thin films were exposed to E-field of Van de Graaff (VDG) generator at three different directions-horizontal (H), tilted (T), and vertical (V)-relative to the plane of the substrate. Surface and bulk characterizations of the field-treated BHJs affirmed that fullerene molecules can easily penetrate the spaghetti-like P3HT and move up and down following the E-field. Using E-field treatment, we achieved favorable morphologies with efficient charge separation, transport, and collection. We improve; (1) the hole mobility values up to 19.4 × 10-4 ± 1.6 × 10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 and (2) the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of conventional and inverted OPVs up to 2.58 ± 0.02% and 4.1 ± 0.40%, respectively. This E-field approach can serve as a new morphology-tuning technique, which is generally applicable to other polymer-fullerene systems.
AB - To tailor the nanomorphology in polymer/fullerene blends, we study the effect of electrostatic field (Efield) on the solidification of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2, 5-diyl) (P3HT):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC60BM) bulk heterojunction (BHJ). In addition to control; wet P3HT:PC60BM thin films were exposed to E-field of Van de Graaff (VDG) generator at three different directions-horizontal (H), tilted (T), and vertical (V)-relative to the plane of the substrate. Surface and bulk characterizations of the field-treated BHJs affirmed that fullerene molecules can easily penetrate the spaghetti-like P3HT and move up and down following the E-field. Using E-field treatment, we achieved favorable morphologies with efficient charge separation, transport, and collection. We improve; (1) the hole mobility values up to 19.4 × 10-4 ± 1.6 × 10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 and (2) the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of conventional and inverted OPVs up to 2.58 ± 0.02% and 4.1 ± 0.40%, respectively. This E-field approach can serve as a new morphology-tuning technique, which is generally applicable to other polymer-fullerene systems.
KW - Electrostatic field
KW - Fullerene
KW - Nanomorphology
KW - P3HT
KW - Van de Graaff OPVs
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U2 - 10.1021/acsami.6b10870
DO - 10.1021/acsami.6b10870
M3 - Article
C2 - 27982563
AN - SCOPUS:85011115084
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 9
SP - 2678
EP - 2685
JO - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
JF - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
IS - 3
ER -