Holmes, Natalie P. and Marks, Melissa and Kumar, Pankaj and Kroon, Renee and G. Barr, Matthew and Nicolaidis, Nicolas and Feron, Krishna and Pivrikas, Almantas and Adam, Fahy and Mendaza, Amaia Diazde Zerio and Kilcoyne, A. L. David and Müller, Christian and Zhou, Xiaojing and Andersson, Mats R. and Dastoor, Paul C. and Belcher, Warwick J. (2016) Nano-pathways: Bridging the divide between water-processable nanoparticulate and bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics. Nano Energy, 19. pp. 495-510. ISSN 2211-2855

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Abstract

Here we report the application of a conjugated copolymer based on thiophene and quinoxaline units, namely poly[2,3-bis-(3-octyloxyphenyl)quinoxaline-5,8-diyl-alt-thiophene-2,5-diyl] (TQ1), to nanoparticle organic photovoltaics (NP-OPVs). TQ1 exhibits more desirable material properties for NP-OPV fabrication and operation, particularly a high glass transition temperature (T-g) and amorphous nature, compared to the commonly applied semicrystalline polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). This study reports the optimisation of TQ1:PC71BM (phenyl C-71 butyric acid methyl ester) NP-OPV device performance by the application of mild thermal annealing treatments in the range of the T-g (sub-T-g and post-T-g), both in the active layer drying stage and post-cathode deposition annealing stage of device fabrication, and an in-depth study of the effect of these treatments on nanoparticle film morphology. In addition, we report a type of morphological evolution in nanoparticle films for OPV active layers that has not previously-been observed, that of PC71BM nano-pathway formation between dispersed PC71BM-rich nanoparticle cores, which have the benefit of making the bulk film more conducive to charge percolation and extraction.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to M/s Elsevier.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Waterprocessable solar cells; Nanoparticle; Organic photovoltaic; Blend morphology; Glass transitiontem- perature; Scanning transmission X-ray microscopy
Subjects:	Chemistry > Physical Chemistry Materials Science Applied Physics/Condensed Matter Nanoscience/ Nanotechnology
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	Dr. Rajpal Walke
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2018 06:46
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2018 06:46
URI:	http://npl.csircentral.net/id/eprint/2298

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