Improvement of Vacuum Free Hybrid Photovoltaic Performance Based on a Well-Aligned ZnO Nanorod and WO3 as a Carrier Transport Layer

Nguyen Tam Nguyen Truong; Hai Ha Thi Hoang; Chinho Park

doi:10.3390/ma12091490

Improvement of Vacuum Free Hybrid Photovoltaic Performance Based on a Well-Aligned ZnO Nanorod and WO₃ as a Carrier Transport Layer

Materials (Basel). 2019 May 8;12(9):1490. doi: 10.3390/ma12091490.

Authors

Nguyen Tam Nguyen Truong¹, Hai Ha Thi Hoang², Chinho Park³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-Ro, Gyeongsan 38541, Korea. tamnguyentn@ynu.ac.kr.
² School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-Ro, Gyeongsan 38541, Korea. hahoangdna@gmail.com.
³ School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-Ro, Gyeongsan 38541, Korea. chpark@ynu.ac.kr.

Abstract

Well-aligned zinc oxide nanorods (WA-ZnO Nrods) with different lengths were synthesized and the effects of the growth times on the optical, morphological, and electrical properties of the WA-ZnO Nrods were examined. We also investigated the application of WA-ZnO Nrods as an electron transport layer (ETL) and tungsten trioxide (WO₃) as a hole transport layer (HTL) to vacuum free hybrid photovoltaic (HPV) performance. The eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) alloy was used as a top electrode coated using a brush-painting method. A device with the structure of indium tin oxide (ITO)/WA-ZnO Nrods/(P3HT:PCBM)/WO₃/EGaIn was optimized and fabricated. The maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) was ~4.5%. Improvement of the device performance indicates that the well-aligned ZnO Nrods and WO₃ can effectively be applied as charge carrier transport layer for vacuum free hybrid (HPV).

Keywords: inclination angle; nanorods; nanorods orientation; well aligned.