Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV14)
Publication date: 1st March 2014
Hybrid nanostructures, that combine organic and inorganic materials, are a promising technology to obtain highly efficient and low cost devices for solar energy harvesting. The development of new materials for application in these devices requires knowledge of the physical and chemical phenomena involved in their photo-activation. All aspects of the photovoltaic process in hybrid solar cells are closely dependent on the morphology of the heterojunction, particularly exciton generation, dissociation and charge recombination. Thoroughly characterising and understanding how the morphology of hybrid solar cells influences its photovoltaic mechanisms is crucial to allow improvement in device efficiency [1,2]. To address this, electron microscopy techniques are powerful tools to resolve the structural and morphological characteristics of these complex hybrid nanostructured devices. Additionally, electron microscopy techniques allow one to gain insight into the electrical and optical properties underlying solar cell efficiency.
The main structural features of hybrid solar cells are the specific crystal size and orientation, surface composition and interfacial structure. A combination of microscopy techniques has to be used in order to characterize the morphology of these features in different length scales, probing chemical and morphological composition with high spatial resolution.
This present work studied the morphology of the heterojunction in hybrid solar cells using zinc oxide (ZnO) as the electron acceptor material. ZnO was deposited over recrystallized P3HT matrices through atomic layer deposition (ALD), and the resulting film was probed using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), energy – dispersive x-ray (EDX) spectroscopy and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The microscopy images and spectra obtained were analysed to quantitatively examine the geometry of the resulting structure and correlate the nanostructure with charge transport efficiencies. Results obtained gathered information on ZnO particles arrangement in the polymer matrix and their size distribution , which was correlated with the exciton diffusion length on the organic semiconductor. EDX mapping of the samples were obtained for qualitative compositional analysis (Figure 1), and High resolution TEM was employed to complement STEM characterization, by probing the crystallography of the nanostructure.
STEM image of recrystallized P3HT/ZnO film and EDX mapping images of sulphur (S,blue), zinc (Zn, yellow), carbon (C, red) and oxygen (O, orange)
[1]Guziewicz, E. et al. ZnO grown by atomic layer deposition: A material for transparent electronics and organic heterojunctions. J. Appl. Phys. 2009, 105, 122413. [2]Fan, Z. & Lu, J. G. Zinc oxide nanostructures: synthesis and properties. J. Nanosci. Nanotechnol., 2005, 5, 1561–73.
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