Designing new architecture for organic photovoltaic devices

Meghadeepa Maity '18, Professor Alexi C. Arango

Department of Physics, Mount Holyoke College

1. Why solar power? 2. Why organic? 3. Research questions

To make organic solar cells commercially
Power generation from fossil fuels has been causing growing environmental Silicon­based solar panels are viable, we want to achieve
concerns. Coal, oil, and natural gas have limited reserves and are expensive to retrieve. bulky, difficult to install, and High open­circuit voltage
time­consuming to produce. High short­circuit current
On the other hand, the sun is an inexhaustible, non­polluting, and free source of
We want devices that can absorb the full
energy. Although solar power currently contributes to only 1.1% of global power Organic photovoltaics are light­ spectrum of sunlight.
generation, the total solar energy absorbed by the Earth’s surface in one hour can weight, flexible, economical, and
To meet our goals, we need to be able to
easily meet the world’s energy demands for a year! can be mass­produced quickly.
deposit thin films of a variety of materials.

4. Equipment and methods

Arango Lab, Shattuck G03, Mount Holyoke College

Solar cell fabrication and testing

occurs entirely within an inert Sophia Weeks '13

nitrogen environment, in our Thermal evaporation Sputter deposition

Sophia Weeks '13

integrated glovebox system. Deposition techniques employed

5. Device architecture concepts

When a photon is absorbed by the We experimented with various combinations
semiconducting films, it frees an electron and a of electron donor and acceptor layers.
hole (a positive charge). The electron and hole We had to reconsider how to predict the open­
separate and diffuse to opposite electrodes. circuit voltage of our devices.
Electricity is generated as the electron passes
through the external circuit with the intent of
reuniting with the hole.

Margaret Stevens '14

Cascade devices are engineered such that Full absorption of long wavelength
the energy levels of the deposited films form photons can require film thicknesses that
a ‘cascade structure’, i.e., each material has are much thicker than the electron
an energy level that is lower than that of the diffusion length. We solved this problem
material preceding it. by stacking multiple cells on top of one
another to form a tandem device.

Our devices were characterized using a solar­ 6. Observations 7. Conclusions

simulator in our testing glovebox. Evaluating
the device performance using I­V curves
yielded the following results:
Our cascade structures behaved exceedingly
well, achieving open­circuit voltages of up to
1.3 V, a record for Arango Lab.
Our sputterer was able to successfully deposit
from Copper, Zinc oxide, and Indium Tin Oxide
(ITO) targets under Oxygen and Argon plasma.
The tandem devices produced are exhibiting
less open­circuit voltage than is expected.
Observed efficiencies did not exceed 1.4%.
I-V curve for our best cascade structure, indicating observed Voc of almost 1.3 V
A B C
I-V curve indicating observed Voc for single cell (A), observed Voc for
double-stacked cell (B), and expected Voc for double-stacked cell
It had previously been proposed that the open­circuit
voltage is a function of the difference in carrier energy
at the electrodes. The unexpectedly high voltages
achieved from our cascade structures have
now indicated that recombination losses at the charge­
transfer state dictate the open­circuit voltage.
Our custom­designed, facing­target sputter deposition
system was operated for the first time. Its excellent
performance pioneers our ability to create multiple­
stack tandem devices.
Further studies are required to address the inadequate
open­circuit voltage observed for our tandem devices.

8. Ongoing and future work 9. Acknowledgements

This research experience was sponsored by the Lynk UAF ­ Marilyn Dawson
We are continuing to build devices by cascading unconventional semiconducting materials. We are at
Sarles Science Internship Fund in the summer of 2016.
an exciting juncture because there is limited literature on the highly­promising materials we are currently
I would like to thank Professor Alexi Arango for his support and guidance.
using. The expectation is to find the perfect combination of high voltage and high efficiency (above 4%).
Additional acknowledgements go to Len McEachern, Thomas Liimatainen,
Additional research will later be carried out to create effective two­stack tandem devices which produce
and other research students:
double the voltage of the single stack device.
Yihan Gao, Syry Mitchell, Tara Patel and Kathleen Smith.