Development and characterization of the polymer-based thin-film photovoltaic solar cells

• Main Author: Ow Yong, Jian Wei.
• Other Authors: Tang Xiaohong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53264
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report summarizes my final year project (FYP) in these two semesters. Organic photovoltaic solar cells (PSC) have a greater prospect for the future due to the numerous inherent advantages over inorganic PSC, such as greater mechanical flexibility, range of applications, transparency, material abundance, lower production cost and lower specific weight, etc. This FYP focus on fabricating and characterizing the organic PSC devices which are fabricated using donor materials that have the same chemical structure but different molecular weight. In this FYP, the organic PSCs were fabricated using phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the acceptor, while the home-developed new materials, JL-3-111 and JL-3-115.5, were used as the donors. The performance of the organic PSCs fabricated with different molecular weight donor materials was characterized and compared. To understand the factors contributing to the difference in performance of the devices, the electrical, optical and surface morphology of the devices’ material structures were measured and analyzed.