• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.3845-3848
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• 2012

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.20-20
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• 2010

Organic based photovoltaics (OPV) have been received a lot of attention because they are lightweight, inexpensive to fabricate and flexible compare to crystalline Si solar cells. In this seminar, several important progresses in the Polymer PV, such as, formation of bulk heterojunction, development of post annealing technique, tandem cell fabrication will be introduced. In addition that, some efforts to achieve the further improvement in the performance of the Polymer PV will be discussed.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.76-84
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• 2019

Silicon heterojunction solar cells (SHJ) have dominated the photovoltaic market up till now but their conversion performance is practically limited to around 26% compared with the theoretical efficiency limit of 29.4%. A silicon based multi-junction devices are expected to overcome this limitation. In this report, we briefly review the state-of-art characteristic of wide-gap materials which has played a role as top sub-cells in silicon based multi-junction solar cells. In addition, we indicate significantly practical challenges and key issues of these multi-junction combination. Finally, we focus to some characteristics of III-V/c-Si tandem configuration which are reaching highly record performance in multi-junction silicon solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.93-93
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• 2010

Semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) have recently attracted considerable interest for use in photovoltaics. Band gaps of NQDs can be tuned over a considerable range by varying the particle size thereby allowing enhance absorption of solar spectrum. NQDs, synthesized using colloidal routes, are solution processable and promise for a large-area fabrication. Recent advancements in multiple-exciton generation in NQD solutions have afforded possible efficiency improvements. Various architectures have attempted to utilize the NQDs in photovoltaics, such as NQD-sensitized solar cell, NQD-bulk-heterojuction solar cell and etc. Here we have fabricated CdSe NQDs with the band gap of 1.8 eV to 2.1 eV on thin-layers of p-type organic crystallites (1.61 eV) to realize a donor-acceptor type heterojuction solar cell. Simple structure as it was, we could control the interface of electrode-p-layer, and n-p-layer and monitor the following efficiency changes. Specifically, surface molecules adsorbed on the NQDs were critical to enhance the carrier transfer among the n-layer where we could verify by measuring the photo-response from the NQD layers only. Further modifying the annealing temperature after the deposition of NQDs on p-layers allowed higher conversion efficiencies in the device.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2019

Carrier selective solar cell structure has allured curiosity of photovoltaic researchers due to the use of wide band gap transition metal oxide (TMO). Distinctive p/n-type character, broad range of work functions (2 to 7 eV) and risk free fabrication of TMO has evolved new concept of heterojunction intrinsic thin layer (HIT) solar cell employing carrier selective layers such as $MoO_x$, $WO_x$, $V_2O_5$ and $TiO_2$ replacing the doped a-Si layers on either front side or back side. The p/n-doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) layers are deposited by Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD), which includes the flammable and toxic boron/phosphorous gas precursors. Due to this, carrier selective TMO is gaining popularity as analternative risk-free material in place of conventional a-Si:H. In this work hole selective materials such as $MoO_x$, $WO_x$ and $V_2O_5$has been investigated. Recently $MoO_x$, $WO_x$ & $V_2O_5$ hetero-structures showed conversion efficiency of 22.5%, 12.6% & 15.7% respectively at temperature below $200^{\circ}C$. In this work a concise review on few important aspects of the hole selective material solar cell such as historical developments, device structure, fabrication, factors effecting cell performance and dependency on temperature has been reported.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.467.1-467.1
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• 2014

Quantum dots (QD) solar cells has received considerable attention due to their potential of improving the overall conversion efficiency by harvesting excess energy via multiple excitons generation (MEG). Although there have been many reports which show MEG phenomena by using optical measurement of quantum dots themselves, carrier multiplication in real QD photovoltaic devices has been sparsely reported due to difficulty in dissociation of excitons and charge collection. In this reports, heterojunction QD solar cells composed of PbS QD monolayer on highly crystalline $TiO_2$ thin films were fabricated by using Langmuir-Blodgett deposition technique to significantly reduce charge recombination at the interfaces between each QD. The PbS CQDs monolayer was characterized by using UV-vis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for the monolayer QD solar cells was obtained by measurement of external quantum efficiency and determining light absorption efficiency of active layer. Carrier multiplication was observed by measuring IQE greater than 100% over threshold photon energy. Our findings demonstrate that monolayer QD solar cell structure is potentially capable of realizing highly efficient solar cells based on carrier multiplication.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.481.2-481.2
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• 2014

Bulk hetero junction (BHJ) polymer solar cell (PSCs) is one of the most promising fields as alternative energy source. Especially, the development of new p-type conjugated polymer is one of the main issues to get core technology. In this study, we investigated the chemical doping effects of incorporating 3,6-carbazole units into conjugated polymers based on 2,7-carbazole. We assessed the structural effects of this chemical doping by measuring the photovoltaic device performance of the copolymers with and without annealing. Note that the use of nanostructures in the bulk heterojunction layer could be a major obstacle to commercialization because nano-morphologies are frequently unstable at high temperatures. Therefore, the development of thermally stable polymer:fullerene blends with optimized PCEs is an important goal in this area of research. We studied the morphologies of the copolymers incorporating 3,6-carbazole units resulting from thermal annealing to investigate the effects of the difference between the T g values of the 2,7-carbazole unit and the 3,6-carbazole unit.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.277-277
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• 2012

PCDTBT (Poly[N-9''-hepta-decanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4',7'-di-2-thienyl-2',1',3'-benzothiadiazole)]) is an attractive material as a semiconducting polymer for organic thin film transistor (OTFT) and organic solar cell (OSC). High power conversion efficiency (~6%) under simulated AM 1.5G solar illumination of bulk-heterojunction solar cell with PCDTBT and [6,6]-phenyl C60 butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM) blend was reported. In OSC, it is known that the band alignment at the interface between donor and acceptor is critical. Therefore, we studied the interfacial electronic structures of PCDTBT and PC61BM. The polymers are deposited by electro-spray on gold and In-situ x-ray and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy measurements revealed the interfacial electronic structures. We obtained the energy level alignment between two materials and the different interface formation was observed with different deposition order.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.88-88
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• 2009

실리콘 이종접합 태양전지 제작을 위한 주요 요소기술 중 TCO/a-Si:H 간의 계면 특성은 태양전지 효율을 결정하는 주요 인자이다. 일반적으로 투명전도 산화막으로는 ZnO:Al 또는 ITO 가 사용되고 있으며 Zn, In, Sn, O 등의 확산과 Si원소의 확산으로 TCO/a-Si:H 계면에서 $SiO_x$가 생성되어 태양전지 충진률을 감소시키는 영향을 미친다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 TCO/a-Si 계면에서 확산을 방지 하면서 패시베이션 역할을 하는 완충층을 삽입하여 실리콘 이종접합 태양전지의 효율을 높이는 연구를 수행하였다. 완충층으로 사용된 ZnO:Al의 수소화와 Zn 박막, $TiO_2$ 박막의 전기 광학적 특성을 분석하였고 AES 분석을 통해 $SiO_x$의 생성과 각 원소의 확산정도를 분석하고, CTLM을 이용하여 TCO/완충층/a-Si 간의 접촉저항을 측정하였다. 결과적으로 완충층으로 사용된 $TiO_2$(5nm)는 광특성에 큰 감소요인 없이 전기적 특성과 접촉저항 특성이 우수하였으며, 원소들간의 확산방지층으로도 우수한 특성을 보였다. ZnO:Al의 수소화는 SIMS 분석 결과 수소원소들이 계면쪽에 위치하지 않고 표면쪽에 다수 존재함으로써 패시베이션 특성을 크게 보이지 않았으나 AZO 박막의 전기적 특성은 크게 향상 시켰다. 그밖에 완충층으로 사용된 Zn 박막은 두께가 두꺼원 질수록 접촉저항의 감소를 가져왔으나 광학적 특성이 크게 감소하면서 효율적인 광포획 특성을 가지지 못하였다. 본 연구를 통하여 TCO/a-Si:H 간의 완충층 삽입을 통해 접촉저항을 낮추고 원소간의 확산을 억제하여 계면 패시베이션 특성을 향상 시킬수 있었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.73-73
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• 2011

We will report a few methods to improve the efficiency and stability in small molecule based organic solar cells, including the formation of bulk heterojunctions (BHJs) through alternative thermal deposition (ATD), the use of a micro-cavity structure and interface modifications. By ATD which is a simple modification of conventional thermal evaporation, the thicknesses of alternative donor and acceptor layers were precisely controlled down to 0.1 nm, which is critical to form BHJs. The formation of a BHJ in copper(II) phthalocyanine (CuPc) and fullerene (C60) systems was confirmed by AFM, GISAXS and absorption measurements. From analysis of the data, we found that the CuPc|C60 films fabricated by ATD were composed of the nanometer sized disk shaped CuPc nano grains and aggregated C60, which explains the phase separation of CuPc and C60. On the other hand, the co-deposited CuPc:C60 films did not show the existence of separated CuPc nano grains in the CuPc:C60 matrix. The OPV cells fabricated using the ATD method showed significantly enhanced power conversion efficiency compared to the co-deposited OPV cells under a same composition [1]. We will also present by numerical simulation that adoption of microcavity structure in the planar heterojunction can improve the short circuit current in single and tandem OSCs [2]. Interface modifications also allowed us to achieve high efficiency and high stability OSCs.