• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2011년도 제41회 하계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.63-63
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• 2011

In this tutorial session, the field of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells based on small molecular weight materials will be presented. The previously reported studies on the fabrication, structure, and property of the cells as well as the molecular materials are included. Especially, the factors hampering further enhancement in the power conversion efficiency of the cells such as exciton recombination, light absorption and interfacial morphology between electron donor and acceptor layer will be discussed in detail. The recent progress in our group will also be presented. It includes typical materials and cell fabrication techniques we used as well as the studies on improving the light absorption in the electron donor layer and reducing the extinction of excitons formed by introducing the nanostructured interface between organic layers.

• 한국재료학회지
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.236-241
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• 2023

Solar cells based on p-conjugated donor-acceptor (D-A) organic molecular systems are a promising alternative to conventional electrical energy generation. D-A molecular systems, which have a triphenylamine (TPA) moiety linked with a benzothiadiazole (BTD) moiety, open the potential development of new small molecule donors for bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. Here, a series of donor-acceptor-π-acceptor (D-A-π-A) small molecule donors (SMD) derived from triphenylamine (TPA) donor and benzothiadiazole (BTD) acceptor building blocks, were designed for BHJ organic solar cells. The small molecule donors SMD1-4 were studied using density functional theory (DFT) and time dependent-DFT (TDDFT) methods, to understand the effect of cyano and fluorine group functionalization on their properties. The effect of structure alteration by cyano and fluorine group functionalization on the optoelectronic properties, the calculated highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMOs) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMOs) and the HOMO-LUMO gaps were theoretically explored. The V_oc (open-circuit photovoltage) and fill factor (FF) for SMD1-4 were obtained with a PC₇₁BM acceptor, which showed that these organic small molecules are potential small molecule donors for organic bulk heterojunction solar cells.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2011년도 제40회 동계학술대회 초록집
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• pp.336-336
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• 2011

Over the past decades, organic semiconductors have been investigated intensely for their potential in a wide range of optoelectronic device applications since the organic materials have advantages for very light, flexible and low cost device fabrications. In this study, we fabricated small-molecule organic solar cells (OSCs) based on chloro[subphthalocyaninato]boron(III) (SubPc) as an electron donor and $C_{60}$ as an electron acceptor material. Recently SubPc, a cone-shaped molecule with $14{\pi}$-electrons in its aromatic system, has attracted growing attention in small-molecule OSC applications as an electron-donating material for its greater open-circuit voltage (VOC), extinction coefficient and dielectric constant compared to conventional planar metal phthalocyanines. In spite of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) enhancement of small-molecule OSC using SubPc and $C_{60}$, however, the study on the interface between donor-acceptor heterojunction of this system is limited. In this work, SubPc thin films at various thicknesses were deposited by organic molecular beam deposition (OMBD) and the evolution of surface morphology was observed using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). We also investigated the influence of film thickness and surface morphology on the PCE of small-molecule OSC devices.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제34권7호
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• pp.2148-2154
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• 2013

Three push-pull organic semiconductors, TPA-$Th_3$-MMN (1), TPA-ThTT-MMN (2), and TPA-ThDTT-MMN (3), comprising a triphenylamine donor and a methylene malononitrile acceptor linked by various ${\pi}$-conjugated thiophene units were synthesized, and the effects of the ${\pi}$-conjugated bridging unit on the photovoltaic characteristics of solution-processed small-molecule organic solar cells based on these semiconductors were investigated. Planar bridging units with extended ${\pi}$-conjugation effectively facilitated intermolecular ${\pi}-{\pi}$ packing interactions in the solid state, resulting in enhanced $J_{sc}$ values of the SMOSCs fabricated with bulk heterojunction films.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.75-96
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• 2017

As electron donor/acceptor materials for organic photovoltaic cells, small-molecules donors/acceptor are attracting more and more attention. In this work, we investigated the electronic structures, electrochemical properties, and charge carrier transport properties of four recently-synthesized small-molecule donors/acceptor, namely, DPDCPB (A), DPDCTB (B), DTDCPB (A1), and DTDCTB (B1), by a series of ab initio calculations. The calculations look into the electronic structure of singly oxidized and reduced molecules, the first anodic and cathodic potentials, and the electrochemical gaps. Results of our calculations were in accord with those from experiments. Using Marcus theory, we also computed the reorganization energies of hole/electron hoppings, as well as hole/electron transfer integrals of multiple possible molecular dimer configurations. Our calculations indicated that the electron/hole transport properties are very sensitive to the relative separations/orientations between neighboring molecules. Due to high reorganization energies for electron hopping, the hole mobilities in the molecular crystals are at least an order of magnitude higher than the electron mobilities.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제42회 동계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.276-276
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• 2012

The interface morphology of organic active layers is known to play a crucial role in the performance of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells. Especially, a controlled nanostructure with a large contact area between electron donor (D) and acceptor (A) layers is necessary to improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the cells since the short exciton diffusion lengths in organic semiconductors limit the charge (hole and electron) separation before excitons recombination. In this work, we developed simple solvent treating methods to fabricate a nanostructured DA interface and applied them to enhance the PCE of ZnPc/C60 based small molecule OPV cells. Interestingly, it was observed that the solvent treatment on the donor layer prior to the deposition of the acceptor layer resulted in a significant decrease in PCE, which was due to an existence of undesirable voids at the DA interface. Instead, the solvent vapor treatment after the DA bilayer formation led to densely packed and well dispersed DA contacts. Consequently, 3-fold enhancement of PCE as compared to the untreated bilayer cell was accomplished.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제33권9호
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• pp.2897-2902
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• 2012

New photovoltaic donor materials, 4,4'-(2,2'-bithiazole-5,5'-diyl)bis(N,N-diphenylbenzenamine) (BDT) and 4-(2,2'-bithiazol-5-yl)-N,N-diphenylbenzenamine (BT), were synthesized. A solution processable triphenylamine-containing bithiazole (BDT and BT) was blended with a [6,6]-phenyl $C_{61}$ butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) acceptor to study the performance of small-molecule-based bulk heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic devices. Optimum device performance was achieved after annealing, for device with a BDT/PCBM ratio of 1:4. The open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, and power conversion efficiency of the device with the aforementioned BDT/PCBM ratio were 0.51 V, 4.10 $mA\;cm^{-2}$, and 0.68%, respectively, under simulated AM 1.5 solar irradiation (100 $mW\;cm^{-2}$).

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제43회 하계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.221-221
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• 2012

Small-molecule organic photovoltaic cells have recently attracted growing attention due to their potential for the low-cost fabrication of flexible and lightweight solar modules. The PVP/Ag nanoparticles were synthesized by the reaction of poly vinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and silver nitrate at $150^{\circ}C$. In the reaction, the size of the nanoparticles was controlled by relative mole fractions between PVP and Ag. The PVP/Ag nanoparticles with various sizes were then spin coated on the patterned ITO glass prior to the deposition of the PEDOT:PSS hole transport layer. The scattering of the incident light caused by these incorporated nanoparticles resulted in an increase in the path length of the light through the active layer and hence the enhancement of the light absorption. This scattering effect increased as the size of the nanoparticles increased, but it was offset by the decrease in total transmittance caused by the non-transparent nanoparticles. As a result, the maximum power conversion efficiency, 0.96% which was the value enhanced by 14% compared to the cell without incorporation of nanoparticles, was obtained when the mole fraction of PVP:Ag was 24:1 and the size of the nanoparticles was 20~40 nm.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2015년도 제49회 하계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.249.2-249.2
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• 2015

Connecting two or more sub-cells is a simple and effective way of improving power conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells, and the theoretical efficiency of this tandem cell is known to reach 85~88% of the sum of the sub-cell's efficiencies. There are two ways of connecting sub-cells in the tandem structure, i.e. parallel and series connection. The parallel connection can increase the short circuit current (Jsc) and the series connection can increase the open circuit voltage (Voc). Although various tandem structures have been studied, the full use of incident light and optimization of cell efficiency is still limited. In this work, we designed series tandem solar cells consisting of lead sulfide (PbS) quantum dots/zinc oxide-based QDSC and zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc)/C60-based small molecule OSCs. It is expected that the loss of the incident light is minimized because the absorption range of the PbS quantum dots and ZnPc is significantly different, and the Voc increases according to the Kirchhoff's law.