Tailoring nanoscale morphology of polymer: Fullerene blends using electrostatic field

Elshobaki, Moneim; Gebhardt, Ryan; Carr, John; Lindemann, William; Wang, Wenjie; Grieser, Eric; Venkatesan, Swaminathan; Ngo, Evan; Bhattacharjee, Ujjal; Strzalka, Joseph; Jiang, Zhang; Qiao, Qiquan; Petrich, Jacob; Vaknin, David; Chaudhary, Sumit

doi:10.1021/acsami.6b10870

Title: Tailoring nanoscale morphology of polymer: Fullerene blends using electrostatic field

Journal Article · Mon Dec 05 00:00:00 EST 2016 · ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6b10870· OSTI ID:1340684

^[1]; Gebhardt, Ryan ^[2]; Carr, John ^[2]; Lindemann, William ^[2]; Wang, Wenjie ^[3]; Grieser, Eric ^[2]; Venkatesan, Swaminathan ^[4]; Ngo, Evan ^[4]; Bhattacharjee, Ujjal ^[2]; Strzalka, Joseph ^[5]; Jiang, Zhang ^[5]; Qiao, Qiquan ^[4]; Petrich, Jacob ^[2]; Vaknin, David ^[6]; Chaudhary, Sumit ^[2]

Mansoura Univ., Mansoura (Egypt); Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States)
South Dakota State Univ., Brookings, SD (United States)
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States); Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)

We study the effect of electrostatic field (E-field) on the solidification of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2, 5-diyl) (P3HT):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC₆₀BM) bulk heterojunction (BHJ) in order to tailor the nanomorphology in polymer/fullerene blends. In addition to control; wet P3HT:PC₆₀BM thin films were exposed to E-field of Van de Graaff (VDG) generator at three different directions—horizontal (H), tilted (T), and vertical (V)—relative to the plane of the substrate. Surface and bulk characterizations of the field-treated BHJs affirmed that fullerene molecules can easily penetrate the spaghetti-like P3HT and move up and down following the E-field. We achieved favorable morphologies with efficient charge separation, transport, and collection by using the E-field treatment,. We improve; (1) the hole mobility values up to 19.4 × 10^–4 ± 1.6 × 10^–4 cm² V^–1 s^–1 and (2) the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of conventional and inverted OPVs up to 2.58 ± 0.02% and 4.1 ± 0.40%, respectively. This E-field approach can serve as a new morphology-tuning technique, which is generally applicable to other polymer–fullerene systems.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357; GM915; AC02-07CH11358; CBET–1236839

OSTI ID:: 1340684

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1347909

Report Number(s):: IS-J 9235; 129386; TRN: US1701178

Journal Information:: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Vol. 9, Issue 3; ISSN 1944-8244

Publisher:: American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 12 works

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Title: Tailoring nanoscale morphology of polymer: Fullerene blends using electrostatic field

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