Controlling the morphology of a hybrid polymer/nanoparticle active layer of solar cells: mesoscopic simulationстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 11 декабря 2019 г.
Аннотация:Polymer based solar cells (PSCs) have attracted great interest as a prospective replacement for inorganic solar cells due to their light weight, low-cost and easy manufacturing. Single layer PSCs are made by sandwiching a layer of organic optoelectronic materials between two conductors. The mixtures of conjugated copolymers (CP) and inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) are considered promising materials for a photo- active layer which can be prepared by spin casting a solvent-based dis- persion of CP and NPs. The forming morphology of the active layer is crucial for performance of PSCs. Therefore, it is important to carry out a preliminary study of such materials for subsequent design of an ac- tive layer with high energy conversion efficiency. It is believed that a bicontinuous, interconnected, well phase-separated morphology of electron donor and acceptor phases would be optimal for transport of holes and electrons, respectively. In this study, we developed a coarse- grained model of the photoactive layer based on CP/NPs mixture. We use diblock copolymer as the active agent to produce the desired mor- phology of the photoactive layer during preparation. Due to incompati- bility of the blocks, they can segregate into domains on the nanometer length scale. We consider that one of the blocks has affinity to NPs cov- ered with ligands. This model (using dissipative dynamic simulations) allows us to study the material in a large range of parameters. We ob- serve that proper choices of type of ligands of NPs and the chemical structure, length, and ratio of the copolymer blocks allow us to govern the morphology of the photoactive layer of solar cell devices. The ideal morphology with cubic symmetry of domains of the double gyroid type, having three-dimensional periodicity in space, can be formed under certain conditions. Therefore, the active layer will have a well- organized percolation network of conductive paths, which should im- prove power conversion efficiency of PSCs.