Issue |
EPJ Photovolt.
Volume 9, 2018
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 4 | |
Number of page(s) | 7 | |
Section | Organic Materials and Devices | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2018003 | |
Published online | 09 April 2018 |
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2018003
Regular Article
Time-dependent efficiency measurements of polymer solar cells with dye additives: unexpected initial increase of efficiency
1
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Santa Clara University,
Santa Clara,
CA 95053, USA
2
Department of Physics, Santa Clara University,
Santa Clara,
CA 95053, USA
3
Center for Nanostructures, Santa Clara University,
Santa Clara,
CA 95053, USA
* e-mail: bmcnelis@scu.edu
Received:
13
July
2017
Received in final form:
20
January
2018
Accepted:
24
January
2018
Published online: 9 April 2018
We report the effects of the addition of two azo-dye additives on the time-dependent efficiency of polymer solar cells. Although the maximum efficiencies of devices containing different amounts of dye do not vary greatly over the selected concentration range, the time dependence results reveal a surprising initial increase in efficiency in some samples. We observe this effect to be correlated with a leakage current, although a specific mechanism is not yet identified. We also present the measured lifetimes of these solar cells, and find that variations in dye concentrations produce a small effect at most. Characterization of the bulk heterojunction layer (active layer) morphology using atomic-force microscope (AFM) imaging reveals reordering patterns which suggest that the primary effects of the dyes arise via structural, not absorptive, characteristics.
Key words: polymer photovoltaic / dye additives / morphology / leakage current
© K.J. Bandaccari et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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