- Title
- Surfactant Engineering and Its Role in Determining the Performance of Nanoparticulate Organic Photovoltaic Devices
- Creator
- Chowdhury, Riku; Holmes, Natalie P.; Cooling, Nathan; Belcher, Warwick J.; Dastoor, Paul C.; Zhou, Xiaojing
- Relation
- ACS Omega Vol. 7, Issue 11, p. 9212-9220
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.1c05711
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- The fabrication of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) from non-hazardous nanoparticulate (NP) inks offers considerable promise for the development of eco-friendly large-scale printed solar modules. However, the typical NP core–shell morphology (driven by the different donor/acceptor affinities for the surfactant used in NP synthesis) currently hinders the photovoltaic performance. As such, surfactant engineering offers an elegant approach to synthesizing a more optimal intermixed NP morphology and hence an improved photovoltaic performance. In this work, the morphology of conventional sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 2-(3-thienyl) ethyloxybutylsulfonate (TEBS)-stabilized poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) donor:phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM) acceptor NPs is probed using scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, UV–vis spectroscopy, grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy. While the SDS-stabilized NPs exhibit a size-independent core–shell morphology, this work reveals that TEBS-stabilized NPs deliver an intermixed morphology, the extent of which depends on the particle size. Consequently, by optimizing the TEBS-stabilized NP size and distribution, NP-OPV devices with a power conversion efficiency that is ∼50% higher on average than that of the corresponding SDS-based NP-OPV devices are produced.
- Subject
- morphology; nanoparticles; organic polymers; sodium dodecyl sulfate; surfactants; SDG 7; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1485671
- Identifier
- uon:51668
- Identifier
- ISSN:2470-1343
- Rights
- © 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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