Organic photovoltaic devices based on a block copolymer/fullerene blend

✍ Scribed by Richard P. Barber Jr.; Romel D. Gomez; Warren N. Herman; Danilo B. Romero

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 264 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1566-1199
• DOI: 10.1016/j.orgel.2006.07.004

✦ Synopsis

Conjugated semiconducting block copolymers are interesting organic materials for possible photovoltaic device applications because of their capability to form self-organized nanostructures and the tunability of their electronic and optical properties as a function of the relative lengths of the constituent monomers. In this work, we report the results of our investigation of polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices based on the block copolymer [MEH-PPV]-co-[biphenylene vinylene] derived from the widely used poly[2-methoxy-5-[2 0 -ethyl-hexyloxy]-1,4-phenylene-vinylene] (MEH-PPV) as an electron donor material in conjunction with the common electron acceptor molecule [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester, a soluble derivative of C 60 . We find that the morphology and photovoltaic characteristics of these devices are strongly influenced by the blend concentration and thickness of the electro-active organic layer. Our initial results demonstrate that a power conversion efficiency of 2.4% is achieved with these materials.