• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.79-86
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• 2023

As we strive to mitigate the environmental impact caused by the use of fossil fuels, the exploration of alternative energy sources has gained significant attention. Solar energy, in particular, has emerged as a promising solution due to its eco-friendly nature and virtually limitless availability. Among the various types of solar cells that harness this abundant energy source, organic solar cells have garnered considerable interest. Organic solar cells feature a photo-active layer composed of organic semiconductors, offering a range of appealing advantages such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, translucency, and the ability to produce customizable colors. However, the commercialization of organic solar cells has been impeded by certain challenges, notably their relatively low efficiency and stability. To overcome these obstacles and pave the way for wider adoption, researchers have been exploring innovative approaches, including the implementation of ternary blend organic solar cells. This strategy involves introducing a third component into the photo-active layer alongside the organic semiconductors, with the aim of enhancing the overall performance of the solar cell. In this paper, we delve into the issues associated with organic solar cells and focus on one potential solution: ternary blend organic solar cells. Specifically, we examine the application of this approach to PM6:Y6, which stands as one of the most popular combinations of organic semiconductors. By investigating the potential of ternary blends, particularly utilizing PM6:Y6, we aim to accelerate the commercialization of organic solar cells.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.113-117
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• 2021

Among the next-generation solar cells, organic solar cells using organic materials are a key energy production device for the future energy generation devices, and have recently been receiving a lot of attention with rapid growth. To improve the efficiency of organic solar cells, interfacial engineering technology has been widely applied. In particular, it is widely used to improve device efficiency through energy level control by using interface engineering on the anode and cathode, which are positive electrodes, and to ultimately utilize interface engineering for tandem organic solar cells to derive excellent electrical and optical performance to produce high-performance devices. In this article, we will summarize and introduce recent research trends on interfacial engineering used in organic solar cells, and discuss the method of manufacturing high-performance organic solar cells.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.395-399
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• 2024

Among various organic materials suitable for silicon-based inorganic-organic hybrid solar cells, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) has been extensively studied due to its high optical transmittance, high work function, and low bandgap characteristics. The electro-optical properties of PEDOT:PSS have a significant impact on the power conversion efficiency of silicon-organic hybrid solar cells. To enhance the photovoltaic properties of the silicon-organic hybrid solar cells, we developed a method to improve the properties of the PEDOT:PSS film using Ag nanowires (NW) instead of conventional solvent addition methods. The influence of the Ag NW on the electro-optical property of the PEDOT:PSS film and the photovoltaic performance of the silicon-organic hybrid solar cells were investigated. The addition of Ag NW further improved the sheet resistance of the PEDOT:PSS film, enhancing the performance of the silicon-organic hybrid solar cells. The present work using the low sheet resistance PEDOT:PSS layer paves the way to develop simple yet more efficient silicon-organic hybrid solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.291-291
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• 2010

Organic solar cells have attracted much interest due to the potential advantage of the lightness, simple solution processing and flexibility. Until recently, the focus of organic solar cells research has been on optimization of material processing to improve the power conversion efficiency. However, area scaling is an important position for alternative to the market dominating solar cells. Spray deposition technologies have advantage of less material wastage and possibility of large scale photoactive area coating when compared with spin coating process. We investigated the performance of organic solar cells as a function of active area using two types of deposition process. The commonly used process is spin coating which can be fabricated organic materials deposition for devices. Spray deposition process compare with spin coating for large-area organic solar cells. The spray deposition organic layer shows excellent performance up to the active area of $4\;cm^2$ with the PCE of ~3.0 % under AM.1.5 simulated illumination with an intensity of $100mW/cm^2$. This indicates that the spray deposition process can be used as a mass production process for evaluating large-area organic solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.167-171
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• 2007

Currently, the alternative energy is one of the critical issues because of exhaustion of petroleum resources and its high cost. The solar cell is considered as the one of the promising alternative energy. And the solar cell can be classified to inorganic solar cell and organic solar cell. Although the efficiency of organic solar cell is very lower than the that of inorganic solar cell, organic solar cells have many advantages including low process cost, high transmittance, color variation, and flexibility. For these reasons, organic solar cells have the potential in low cost solar cell market that is challenging for inorganic solar cells. Recent researches of organic solar cell is concentrating on enhancement of efficiency, lifetime, and stability to order to commercially use. Working principles and the development issues of organic solar cells are discussed in this paper.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.410.2-410.2
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• 2016

Tandem structure is promising in organic solar cells because of its double open-circuit voltage (VOC) and efficient photon energy conversion. In a typical tandem device, the two single sub-cells are stacked and connected by an interconnecting layer. The fabrication of two sub-cells are usually carried out in a glovebox filled with nitrogen or argon gas, which makes it expensive and laborious. We report a glovebox-free fabricated inverted tandem organic solar cells wherein the tandem structure comprises sandwiched interconnecting layer based on p-doped hole-transporting, metal, and electron-transporting materials. Complete fabrication process of the tandem device was performed outside the glove box. The tandem solar cells based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and (6,6)-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) can realize a high VOC, which sums up of the two sub-cells. The tandem device structure was ITO/ZnO/P3HT:PCBM/PEDOT:PSS/MoO3/Au/Al/ZnO-d/P3HT:PCBM/PEDOT:PSS/Ag. The separate sub-cells were morphologically and thermally stable up to 160 oC. The high stability of the active layer benefits in the fabrication processes of tandem device. The performance of tandem organic solar cells comes from the sub-cells with an 50 nm thick active layer of P3HT:PCBM, achieving an average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 2.9% (n=12) with short-circuit current density (JSC) = 4.26 mA/cm2, VOC = 1.10 V, and fill factor (FF) = 0.62. Based on these findings, we propose a new method to improve the performance and stability of tandem organic solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.61-61
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• 2011

Polymer solar cells have become one of the rising next generation solar cells due to their potential for lightweight and bendable plastic solar modules. Recently, the power conversion efficiency of polymer solar cells has reached ~8 %, which can make ~6 % plastic solar modules when it comes to the modular aperture ratio of ~80 %. Although this efficiency is far behind that of conventional inorganic solar cells, the plastic solar modules are expected to create new energy market into which the inorganic solar modules could not make inroads. In the near future, the plastic solar modules can be integrated with consumer electronics that should overcome the regulation of energy consumption. For this application, the polymer solar cells should be fabricated in a variety of module shapes, which can be resolved by employing conventional and/or advanced coating and molding technologies of plastics products. In this tutorial, the fundamental aspect of polymer solar cells will be briefly introduced and then recent trends in terms of materials and devices will be reviewed together with showing recent results in organic nanoelectronics laboratory.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.61-64
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• 2019

In this study, we investigate organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells with a very simple three-layer structure (Al/n-Si/PEDOT:PSS). The performance of hybrid solar cells is optimized by controlling the sheet resistance and optical transmittance of the PEDOT:PSS layers. As the thickness of the PEDOT:PSS layer decreases, the optical absorption of the n-Si increases, which greatly improves the short-circuit current density ($J_{SC}$) of devices, but the increase in sheet resistance leads to a decrease in the open-circuit voltage ($V_{OC}$) and the fill factor (FF). The solar cell with the 180-nm thick PEDOT:PSS layer shows a highest efficiency of 8.45% ($V_{OC}$: 0.435 V, $J_{SC}$: $33.7mA/cm^2$, FF: 57.5%). Considering these results, it is expected that the optimizing process for the sheet resistance and transmittance of the PEDOT:PSS layer is essential for producing high-efficiency organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells and will serve as an important basis for achieving low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.192.1-192.1
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• 2014

We report solution-processed organic trilayer solar cells consisting of poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), a conjugated polyelectrolyte (CPE) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), wherein the effect CPE layer thickness on device properties was investigated. The current-voltage characteristics under illumination and dark as well as photoluminescence were characterized using various concentrations (0.02, 0.1, and 0.3wt%) of to deposit the CPE interlayer between the donor and acceptor layers. We also investigated the influence of molecular dipole moments in the trilayer solar cells by external stimuli. These results provide an experimental approach for investigating the influence of interfacial dipoles on solar cell parameters when placed between the donor and acceptor and allow us to obtaining fundamental information about the donor/acceptor interface in organic solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.61.2-61.2
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• 2015

In the past decades, green energy, such as solar energy, wind power, hydropower, biomass energy, geothermal energy, and so on, has been widely investigated and developed to solve energy shortage. Recently, organic solar cells have attracted much attention, because they have many advantages, including low-cost, flexibility, light weight, and easy fabrication [1-3]. Organic solar cells are as a potential candidate of the next generation solar cells. In this abstract, to improve the power conversion efficiency and the stability, the inverted polymer solar cells with various structures were developed [4-6]. The novel cell structures included the P3HT:PCBM inverted polymer solar cells with AZO nanorods array, with pentacene-doped active layer, and with extra P3HT interfacial layer and PCBM interfacial layer. These three difference structures could respectively improve the performance of the P3HT:PCBM inverted polymer solar cells. For the inverted polymer solar cells with AZO nanorods array as the electronic transportation layer, by using the nanorod structure, the improvement of carrier collection and carrier extraction capabilities could be expected due to an increase in contact area between the nanorod array and the active layer. For the inverted polymer solar cells with pentacene-doped active layer, the hole-electron mobility in the active layer could be balanced by doping pentacene contents. The active layer with the balanced hole-electron mobility could reduce the carrier recombination in the active layers to enhance the photocurrent of the resulting inverted polymer solar cells. For the inverted polymer solar cells with extra P3HT and PCBM interfacial layers, the extra PCBM and P3HT interfacial layers could respectively improve the electron transport and hole transport. The extra PCBM interfacial layer served another function was that led more P3HT moving to the top side of the absorption layer, which reduced the non-continuous pathways of P3HT. It indicated that the recombination centers could be further reduced in the absorption layer. The extra P3HT interfacial layer could let the hole be more easily transported to the MoO3 hole transport layer. The high performance of the novel P3HT:PCBM inverted polymer solar cells with various structures were obtained.