Self-assembled, highly crystalline porous ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) interlayer for Si/organic hybrid solar cells

Sung Bum Kang, Myeong Hoon Jeong, In Young Choi, So Dam Sohn, Su Han Kim, Hyung Joon Shin, Won Il Park, Jae Cheol Shin, Myoung Hoon Song, Kyoung Jin Choi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ferroelectric polymers can effectively improve the photovoltaic performance of solar cells, inducing an electric field to promote the dissociation of electron-hole pairs, with the thus generated charges collected from open pores. Since such performance enhancement requires materials with a unique porous crystalline structure, we herein present a novel route to highly crystalline and porous poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) thin films utilizing a modified breath figure method based on spin coating. The key feature of the above method is the addition of small amounts of water to the acetone/P(VDF-TrFE) solution to produce porous ferroelectric thin films which have significantly higher crystallinity values than nanostructures or films prepared by other methods. Furthermore, n-Si / poly(3,4-ethylene dioxy thiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) hybrid solar cells with porous P(VDF-TrFE) interlayers are demonstrated to exhibit spontaneous polarization sufficient for increasing their open circuit voltages and fill factors. Finite-difference time-domain simulation reveals that the electric field due to the above spontaneous polarization increases the built-in electric field of the Schottky junction between n-Si and poly(3,4-ethylene dioxy thiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) and reduces the reverse leakage current of the Schottky diode. Thus, the organic ferroelectric thin films with controlled porosity proposed in this study are well suited for a broad range of optoelectronic applications.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)243-250
Number of pages8
JournalNano Energy
Volume41
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2017

Keywords

  • Breath figure
  • Ferroelectric materials
  • Polymers
  • Solar cells
  • Thin porous films

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