• 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.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.1129-1129
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• 2009

Here the improved performance of polymer/polymer solar cells, which are of importance to achieve real plastic solar cells in the near future, is reported. First, the progress in polymer/polymer solar cells is briefly reviewed and then the limiting factors are discussed in terms of charge transport.

• 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.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.175-178
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• 2006

Solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells were fabricated using a polymer matrix in electrolyte in the purpose of the improvement of the durability in the dye-sensitized solar cell. In these dye-sensitized solar cells, the polymer electrolyte consisting of $I_2$, LiI, ionic liquid, ethylene carbonate/propylene carbonate and polymer matrix was casted onto $TiO_2$ electrode impregnated Ruthenium complex dye as a photosensitizer. Photovoltaic properties of solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells using polymer matrix (PMMA, PEG, or PAN) were investigated. Comparing photovoltaic effects of cells using hole conducting polymers (BE or 6P) instead of polymer matrix, we investigated the availability of the solid-state polymer electrolyte in dye-sensitized solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.74-74
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• 2011

Polymer solar cells utilize bulk heterojunction (BHJ) type photo-active layer in which the electron donating polymer and electron accepting C60 derivatives are mixed together. In the BHJ system the electron donating polymer and electron accepting C60 derivatives are blended. The blended system causes charge recombination at the interface between the BHJ active layer and electrode. To reduce the charge recombination at the interface, it is needed to use an interlayer that can selectively transfer electrons or holes. We have developed solution processable wide band gap inorganic interfacial layers for polymer solar cells. The effect of interlayers on the performance of polymer solar cell was investigated for various types of conjugated polymers. We have found that inorganic interfacial layers enhanced the solar cell efficiency through the reduction of charge recombination at the interface between active layer and electrode. Furthermore, the stability of the polymer solar cell using the interlayer was significantly improved. The efficiency of 6.5% was obtained from the PTB7:PCBM70 based solar cells utilizing $TiO_2$nanoparticles as an interlayers.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.2 no.6
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• pp.28-32
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• 2008

Polymer solar cells are a type of organic solar cell (also called plastic solar cell), or organic photovoltaic cell that produce electricity from sunlight using polymers. It is a relatively novel technology, they are being researched by universities, national laboratories and several companies around the world. In this paper, stamping mold of barrier ribs for polymer solar cells was manufactured by lithography and electroforming which can control the height of pattern and 80nl of barrier ribs was manufactured by using hot embossing.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.107-113
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• 2020

Here we report the long-term stability of polymer:nonfullerene solar cells which were stored under dark and indoor light condition. The polymer:nonfullerene solar cells were fabricated using bulk heterojunction (BHJ) layers of poly[(2,6-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl) thiophen-2-yl)-benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene))-alt-(5,5-(1',3'-di-2-thienyl-5',7-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1',2'-c:4',5'-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione))] (PBDB-T) and 3,9-bis(6-methyl-2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2',3-d']-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b']dithiophene (IT-M). To investigate their long-term stability, the PBDB-T:IT-M solar cells were stored in an argon-filled glove box. One set of the fabricated solar cells was completely covered with an aluminum foil to prevent any effect of light, whereas another set was exposed to indoor light. The solar cells were subjected to a regular performance measurement for 40 weeks. Results revealed that the PBDB-T:IT-M solar cells underwent a gradual decay in performance irrespective of the storage condition. However, the PBDB-T:IT-M solar cells stored under indoor light condition exhibited relatively lower power conversion efficiency (PCE) than those stored under the dark. The inferior stability of the solar cells under indoor light was explained by the noticeably changed optical absorption spectra and dark spot generation, indicative of degradations in the BHJ layers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.318-318
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• 2010

We present the effect of interlayers of polymer tandem solar cells on their photovoltaic performance. P-type and n-type interlayers are essential for the series-connection of the subcells and enable to form the tandem cell architecture by the solution processing. In this study, we use PEDOT:PSS, nanocrystalline $TiO_2$, and blends of semiconducting polymers and fullerene derivatives as a hole transporting layer, electron transporting layer, and photoactive layers, respectively. We show that photovoltaic performances of polymer tandem solar cells depending on various PEDOT:PSS layers with the different electric conductivity and the various $TiO_2$ layer thickness.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.29-32
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• 2003

Polymer electrolyte membranes are developed for the applications to facilitated transport membranes, fuel cells and solar cells. The polymer electrolyte membranes containing silver salt show the remarkably high separation performance for olefin/paraffin mixture in the solid state; the propylene permeance is 45 GPU and the ideal selectivity of propylene/propane is 15,000. For fuel cell membranes, the effects of the presence and size of the proton transport channels on the proton conductivity and methanol permeability were investigated. The cell performance for dye-sensitized solar cells employing polymer electrolytes are measured under light illumination. The overall energy conversion efficiency reaches 5.44 % at 10 ㎽/$\textrm{cm}^2$, to our knowledge the highest value ever reported in the polymer electrolytes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.116-116
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• 2009

$TiO_2$ pastes was synthesized to obtained of high efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells using size dependent co-polymer. SBM co-polymer binder is consist of styrene, n-butyl acrylate, and methacrylic acid (SBM) monodisperse co-polymer binder materials and this $TiO_2$ pastes were applied of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The photoanodes were characterized by ATR-Fourier Transform spectrometer, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and morphology was investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The photoelectrochemical properties of the thin films and the performance of DSSCs were measured by photovoltaic-current density, AC impedance and monochromatic incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE). DSSC based on the 100nm size co-polymer binder was obtained conversion efficiency of 8.1% under irradiation of AM 1.5(100 $mWcm^2$).