Book Description

Solar energy harvested directly from sunlight using photovoltaic (PV) technology has become one of the most promising ways to meet growing global energy needs with a sustainable resource while minimizing environmental concerns. Especially, organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells have been attracting a great deal of interest as a source of renewable energy because of their potential as low-cost, flexible, light-weight and large-scale devices. The choice of materials in a BHJ solar cell is very important for device performance because the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) are determined by their some crucial characteristics such as energy levels, charge transfer mobilities and structural orders. In this dissertation, two carbazole-diketopyrrolopyrrole based conjugated polymers (P1 and P2) and three thieno-[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD) based small molecules (M1, SM1 and SM2) were synthesized and characterized to investigate their optical, electrical and photovoltaic properties. First, the substitution of alkyl and aryl side chains on the carbazole moiety of two push-pull conjugated polymers (P1 and P2) shows the significant differences in the optical, electrical and photovoltaic properties. Second, TPD-based conjugated small molecule with a donor-acceptor-donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D-A-D) framework, M1 shows the relatively deep HOMO level resulting the relatively high Voc.(0.85 eV) Small molecule BHJ solar cells were fabricated and characterized using different M1:PC71BM blend ratios, solvents, and additives and the highest PCE achieved in this study was 1.86%. Lastly, different bridgehead atoms of SM1 and SM2 can affect their energy band levels and device performances. The PCE (2.5%) of the SM2-based SM-BHJ solar cell was higher than that of the SM1-based SM-BHJ solar cell (1.5%).