Studying the effect of high substrate temperature on the microstructure of vacuum evaporated TAPC: C60 organic solar thin films
Materials MDPI 14:7 (2021) 1733
Abstract:
Organic solar cells (OSCs), also known as organic photovoltaics (OPVs), are an emerging solar cell technology composed of carbon-based, organic molecules, which convert energy from the sun into electricity. Key for their performance is the microstructure of the light-absorbing organic bulk heterojunction. To study this, organic solar films composed of both fullerene C60 as electron acceptor and different mole percentages of di-[4-(N,N-di-p-tolyl-amino)-phenyl]-cyclohexane (TAPC) as electron donor were evaporated in vacuum in different mixing ratios (5, 50 and 95 mol%) on an ITO-coated glass substrate held at room temperature and at 110 °C. The microstructure of the C60: TAPC heterojunction was studied by grazing incidence wide angle X-ray scattering to understand the effect of substrate heating. By increasing the substrate temperature from ambient to 110 °C, it was found that no significant change was observed in the crystal size for the C60: TAPC concentrations investigated in this study. In addition to the variation done in the substrate temperature, the variation of the mole percent of the donor (TAPC) was studied to conclude the effect of both the substrate temperature and the donor concentration on the microstructure of the OSC films. Bragg peaks were attributed to C60 in the pure C60 sample and in the blend with low donor mole percentage (5%), but the C60 peaks became nondiscernible when the donor mole percentage was increased to 50% and above, showing that TAPC interrupted the formation of C60 crystals.Perspectives of Organic and Perovskite‐Based Spintronics
Advanced Optical Materials Wiley (2021) 2100215-2100215
Electron spin as fingerprint for charge generation and transport in doped organic semiconductors
Journal of Materials Chemistry C Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) (2021)
Abstract:
<p>We use the electron spin as a probe to gain insight into the mechanism of molecular doping in a p-doped zinc phthalocyanine host across a broad range of temperatures (80–280 K) and doping concentrations (0–5 wt% of F6-TCNNQ).</p>Chain Conformation Control of Fluorene-Benzothiadiazole Copolymer Light-Emitting Diode Efficiency and Lifetime.
ACS applied materials & interfaces 13:2 (2021) 2919-2931
Abstract:
The β-phase, in which the intermonomer torsion angle of a fraction of chain segments approaches ∼180°, is an intriguing conformational microstructure of the widely studied light-emitting polymer poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO). Its generation can in turn be used to significantly improve the performance of PFO emission-layer-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Here, we report the generation of β-phase chain segments in a copolymer, 90F8:10BT, containing 90% 9,9-dioctylfluorene (F8) and 10% 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (BT) units and show that significant improvements in performance also ensue for LEDs with β-phase 90F8:10BT emission layers, generalizing the earlier PFO results. The β-phase was induced by both solvent vapor annealing and dipping copolymer thin films into a solvent/nonsolvent mixture. Subsequent absorption spectra show the characteristic fluorene β-phase peak at ∼435 nm, but luminescence spectra (∼530 nm peak) and quantum yields barely change, with the emission arising following efficient energy transfer to the lowest-lying excited states localized in the vicinity of the BT units. For ∼5% β-phase chain segment fraction relative to 0% β-phase, the LED luminance at 10 V increased by ∼25% to 5940 cd m<sup>-2</sup>, the maximum external quantum efficiency by ∼61 to 1.91%, and the operational stability from 64% luminance retention after 20 h of operation to 90%. Detailed studies addressing the underlying device physics identify a reduced hole injection barrier, higher hole mobility, correspondingly more balanced electron and hole charge transport, and decreased carrier trapping as the dominant factors. These results confirm the effectiveness of chain conformation control for fluorene-based homo- and copolymer device optimization.Direct observation and evolution of electronic coupling between organic semiconductors
Physical Review Materials American Physical Society 5:1 (2021) 015601