Highly Conductive PEDOT:PSS Transparent Hole Transporting Layer with Solvent Treatment for High Performance Silicon/Organic Hybrid Solar Cells

Qingduan Li; Jianwei Yang; Shuangshuang Chen; Jizhao Zou; Weiguang Xie; Xierong Zeng

doi:10.1186/s11671-017-2276-5

Highly Conductive PEDOT:PSS Transparent Hole Transporting Layer with Solvent Treatment for High Performance Silicon/Organic Hybrid Solar Cells

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2017 Aug 23;12(1):506. doi: 10.1186/s11671-017-2276-5.

Authors

Qingduan Li^{1

2}, Jianwei Yang¹, Shuangshuang Chen^{1

2}, Jizhao Zou³, Weiguang Xie⁴, Xierong Zeng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials and Shenzhen Engineering Laboratory for Advance Technology of Ceramics, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, People's Republic of China.
² Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems of Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, People's Republic of China.
³ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials and Shenzhen Engineering Laboratory for Advance Technology of Ceramics, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, People's Republic of China. zoujizhao@szu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Physics and Department of Electronic Engineering, Siyuan Laboratory, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Vacuum Coating Technologies and New Energy Materials, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. wgxie@email.jnu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Efficient Si/organic hybrid solar cells were fabricated with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and surfactant-doped poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): polystyrene (PEDOT:PSS). A post-treatment on PEDOT:PSS films with polar solvent was performed to increase the device performance. We found that the performance of hybrid solar cells increase with the polarity of solvent. A high conductivity of 1105 S cm^{- 1} of PEDOT:PSS was achieved by adopting methanol treatment, and the best efficiency of corresponding hybrid solar cells reaches 12.22%. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and RAMAN spectroscopy were utilized to conform to component changes of PEDOT:PSS films after solvent treatment. It was found that the removal of the insulator PSS from the film and the conformational changes are the determinants for the device performance enhancement. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was used to investigate the recombination resistance and capacitance of methanol-treated and untreated hybrid solar cells, indicating that methanol-treated devices had a larger recombination resistance and capacitance. Our findings bring a simple and efficient way for improving the performance of hybrid solar cell.

Keywords: Conductivity; Hybrid solar cells; PEDOT:PSS; Si/organic; Treatment.