Improving Photovoltaic Properties of P3HT:IC60BA through the Incorporation of Small Molecules

Binrui Xu; Gopalan Sai-Anand; Anantha-Iyengar Gopalan; Qiquan Qiao; Shin-Won Kang

doi:10.3390/polym10020121

Improving Photovoltaic Properties of P3HT:IC₆₀BA through the Incorporation of Small Molecules

Polymers (Basel). 2018 Jan 26;10(2):121. doi: 10.3390/polym10020121.

Authors

Binrui Xu¹, Gopalan Sai-Anand^{2

3}, Anantha-Iyengar Gopalan⁴, Qiquan Qiao⁵, Shin-Won Kang⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 41566, Korea. kezherui123@gmail.com.
² Global Innovative Center for Advanced Nanomaterials, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2298, Australia. SaiAnand.Gopalan@newcastle.edu.au.
³ Future Industries Institute, Division of Information Technology, Engineering and Environment, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia. SaiAnand.Gopalan@newcastle.edu.au.
⁴ Research Institute of Advanced Energy Technology, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea. algopal99@gmail.com.
⁵ Center for Advanced Photovoltaics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 570007, USA. qiquan.qiao@sdstate.edu.
⁶ School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 41566, Korea. swkang@knu.ac.kr.

Abstract

We investigated the role of a functional solid additive, 2,3-dihydroxypyridine (DHP), in influencing the optoelectronic, morphological, structural and photovoltaic properties of bulk-heterojunction-based polymer solar cells (BHJ PSCs) fabricated using poly(3-hexylthiophene): indene-C₆₀ bisadduct (P3HT:IC₆₀BA) photoactive medium. A dramatic increase in the power conversion efficiency (~20%) was witnessed for the BHJ PSCs treated with DHP compared to the pristine devices. A plausible explanation describing the alignment of pyridine moieties of DHP with the indene side groups of IC₆₀BA is presented with a view to improving the performance of the BHJ PSCs via improved crystalline order and hydrophobicity changes.

Keywords: additive; bulk-heterojunction; morphology; polymer solar cells; ternary blend.