Kumar, Pankaj and Bilen, Chhinder and Feron, Krishna and Zhou, Xiaojing and Belcher, Warwick J. and Dastoor, Paul C.
(2014)
Enhanced regeneration of degraded polymer solar cells by thermal annealing.
Applied Physics Letters, 104 (19).
ISSN 0003-6951
Abstract
The degradation and thermal regeneration of poly(3-hexylethiophene) (P3HT):[ 6,6]-phenyl-C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and P3HT:indene-C-60 bisadduct (ICBA) polymer solar cells, with Ca/Al and Ca/Ag cathodes and indium tin oxide/poly(ethylene-dioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate anode have been investigated. Degradation occurs via a combination of three primary pathways:(1) cathodic oxidation, (2) active layer phase segregation, and (3) anodic diffusion. Fully degraded devices were subjected to thermal annealing under inert atmosphere. Degraded solar cells possessing Ca/Ag electrodes were observed to regenerate their performance, whereas solar cells having Ca/Al electrodes exhibited no significant regeneration of device characteristics after thermal annealing. Moreover, the solar cells with a P3HT:ICBA active layer exhibited enhanced regeneration compared to P3HT:PCBM active layer devices as a result of reduced changes to the active layer morphology. Devices combining a Ca/Ag cathode and P3HT:ICBA active layer demonstrated similar to 50% performance restoration over several degradation/regeneration cycles.
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