Kumar, Pankaj and Bilen, Chhinder and Krishna Feron, Krishna and Nicolaidis, Nicolas C. and Gong, Bill B. and Zhou, Xiaojing and Belcher, Warwick J. and Dastoor, Paul C. (2014) Comparative Degradation and Regeneration of Polymer Solar Cells with Different Cathodes. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 6 (7). pp. 5281-5289. ISSN 1944-8244

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Abstract

A comparative degradation study of solar cells based on a bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) blend of poly(3-hexylethiophene) (P3HT) and phenyl [6,6] C-61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) with two different cathodes is reported. Poly(ethylene-dioxythiphene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) coated ITO electrodes were used as the anode, whereas Ca/Al and Ca/Ag electrodes were used as cathodes. Fully degraded devices were subjected to thermal annealing under inert atmosphere. The performance of degraded solar cells with a Ca/Al cathode exhibited no improvement after treatment. However the solar cells with a Ca/Ag cathode exhibited a considerable recovery in their performance following annealing under a nitrogen atmosphere. Indeed, these solar cells could be subjected to many degradation and regeneration cycles. Current density voltage (J-V) characteristics and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies show that this behavior arises from the complex chemical thermodynamics of the reactions that can occur at the cathode/active layer interface. In particular, the recovery of device performance for solar cells with a Ca/Ag cathode is due to the reversible oxidation of Ag upon thermal annealing

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to M/S American Chemical Society.
Subjects:	Materials Science
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	Dr. Rajpal Walke
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2015 10:59
Last Modified:	17 Sep 2015 10:59
URI:	http://npl.csircentral.net/id/eprint/1204

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