Improving the Efficiency of Organic Solar Cells upon Addition of Polyvinylpyridine
1
Instituto de Telecomunicações, Avenida Rovisco Pais, P-1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
2
Department of Bioengineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, UL, Avenida Rovisco Pais, P-1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Materials 2014, 7(12), 8189-8196; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma7128189
Received: 3 November 2014 / Accepted: 12 December 2014 / Published: 22 December 2014
(This article belongs to the Section Energy Materials)
We report on the efficiency improvement of organic solar cells (OPVs) based on the low energy gap polyfluorene derivative, APFO-3, and the soluble C60 fullerene PCBM, upon addition of a residual amount of poly (4-vinylpyridine) (PVP). We find that the addition of 1% by weight of PVP with respect to the APFO-3 content leads to an increase of efficiency from 2.4% to 2.9%. Modifications in the phase separation details of the active layer were investigated as a possible origin of the efficiency increase. At high concentrations of PVP, the blend morphology is radically altered as observed by Atomic Force Microscopy. Although the use of low molecular weight additives is a routine method to improve OPVs efficiency, this report shows that inert polymers, in terms of optical and charge transport properties, may also improve the performance of polymer-based solar cells.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rodrigues, R.; Meira, R.; Ferreira, Q.; Charas, A.; Morgado, J. Improving the Efficiency of Organic Solar Cells upon Addition of Polyvinylpyridine. Materials 2014, 7, 8189-8196.
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