Enhancing the Power Conversion Efficiency of Inverted Organic Photovoltaics with Gold Functionalized Reduced Graphene Oxide. Issue 1737 (11th June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Isseroff, Rebecca; Yang, Zhenhua; Kim, Jessica; Chen, Andrew; Rafailovich, Miriam
• Editors: Facchetti, A.
• Is Part Of: MRS proceedings. Issue 1737:(2015)
• Publication Date: 2015-06-11
• Subjects: energy generation, -- photovoltaic, -- composite; Electrical engineering -- Congresses; Physics -- Congresses; Materials -- Research -- Congresses; Materials science -- Congresses; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1557/opl.2015.599
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0272-9172

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this study, an "inverted" design, phase-separated morphology and gold-functionalized reduced graphene oxide (Au-rGO) were used to address exciton recombination and poor Fermi level alignment. To increase efficiencies, a unique methodology was used to coat Au-rGO on top of the active layer. When 0.05 Au-rGO was blended with the active layer, there were metal-thiolate bonds with P3HT and π-π stacking with PCBM. However, KPFM, measured for the first time for this material, showed that the while 0.05mM Au-rGO reduced the energy gap between P3HT and PBCM, this was offset by recombination. KPFM showed that Au-rGO may be better suited between the active layer and electrode. When 0.5mM Au-rGO was coated on top of the active layer, efficiency increased (p<0.002) nearly 600%, suggesting that Au-rGO is a more effective acceptor than a constituent of the active layer.