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Efficiency enhancement in organic solar cells with ferroelectric polymers

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 296–302 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The recombination of electrons and holes in semiconducting polymer–fullerene blends has been identified as a main cause of energy loss in organic photovoltaic devices. Generally, an external bias voltage is required to efficiently separate the electrons and holes and thus prevent their recombination. Here we show that a large, permanent, internal electric field can be ensured by incorporating a ferroelectric polymer layer into the device, which eliminates the need for an external bias. The electric field, of the order of 50 V μm−1, potentially induced by the ferroelectric layer is tens of times larger than that achievable by the use of electrodes with different work functions. We show that ferroelectric polymer layers enhanced the efficiency of several types of organic photovoltaic device from 1–2% without layers to 4–5% with layers. These enhanced efficiencies are 10–20% higher than those achieved by other methods, such as morphology and electrode work-function optimization. The devices show the unique characteristics of ferroelectric photovoltaic devices with switchable diode polarity and tunable efficiency.

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Figure 1: Working principle of FE-OPV devices.
Figure 2: Improvement in device performance by the FE layer.
Figure 3: Morphologies of FE films and their effect on the device performance.
Figure 4: Switch behaviours of FE-OPV devices.

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Acknowledgements

S.D. thanks the Nebraska Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for financial support (DMR-0820521). A.G. acknowledges financial support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under award DE-SC0004530.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0656, USA

    Yongbo Yuan & Jinsong Huang

  2. Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583-0298, USA

    Yongbo Yuan, Timothy J. Reece, Pankaj Sharma, Shashi Poddar, Stephen Ducharme, Alexei Gruverman & Jinsong Huang

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0299, USA

    Timothy J. Reece, Pankaj Sharma, Shashi Poddar, Stephen Ducharme & Alexei Gruverman

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1595, USA

    Yang Yang

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Contributions

J.H. conceived the idea. J.H. and Y. Yuan designed the experiments. Y. Yuan carried out the fabrication of photovoltaic devices, the current–voltage measurement, the AFM and electrostatic force microscopy measurements and data analysis. Y. Yuan constructed the model. T.J.R., S.P. and S.D. carried out the deposition of P(VDF-TrFE) LB film and capacitance measurement. P.S. and A.G. were responsible for the PFM and conducting AFM measurement. Y. Yang provided the PSBTBT polymer. Y. Yuan, J.H., T.J.R. and S.D. analysed the data. J.H. and Y. Yuan wrote the paper. S.D. reviewed and commented on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinsong Huang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Yuan, Y., Reece, T., Sharma, P. et al. Efficiency enhancement in organic solar cells with ferroelectric polymers. Nature Mater 10, 296–302 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2951

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