- Title
- Comparative degradation and regeneration of polymer solar cells with different cathodes
- Creator
- Kumar, Pankaj; Bilen, Chhinder; Feron, Krishna; Nicolaidis, Nicolas C; Gong, Bill B.; Zhou, Xiaojing; Belcher, Warwick J.; Dastoor, Paul C.
- Relation
- ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces Vol. 6, Issue 7, p. 5281-5289
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/am500637n
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- A comparative degradation study of solar cells based on a bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) blend of poly(3-hexylethiophene) (P3HT) and phenyl [6,6] C₆₁ butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) with two different cathodes is reported. Poly(ethylene-dioxythiphene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) coated ITO electrodes were used as the anode, whereas Ca/Al and Ca/Ag electrodes were used as cathodes. Fully degraded devices were subjected to thermal annealing under inert atmosphere. The performance of degraded solar cells with a Ca/Al cathode exhibited no improvement after treatment. However the solar cells with a Ca/Ag cathode exhibited a considerable recovery in their performance following annealing under a nitrogen atmosphere. Indeed, these solar cells could be subjected to many degradation and regeneration cycles. Current density–voltage (J-V) characteristics and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies show that this behavior arises from the complex chemical thermodynamics of the reactions that can occur at the cathode/active layer interface. In particular, the recovery of device performance for solar cells with a Ca/Ag cathode is due to the reversible oxidation of Ag upon thermal annealing.
- Subject
- polymer solar cells; regeneration; thermal annealing; P3HT; PCBM
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1303760
- Identifier
- uon:20718
- Identifier
- ISSN:1944-8244
- Language
- eng
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