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Understanding the influences of In-situ annealing and substrate vibration on the charge carrier dynamics of ultrasonic spray-coated polymer solar cell

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Abstract

Detailed understanding of the various influences of deposition conditions on the structure–property relationship for spray-coated polymer films is crucial for their scalable device applications. In the present study, the influences of in-situ substrate temperature and acoustic substrate vibration on the charge carrier dynamics of poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PC71BM) based ultrasonic spray-coated polymer solar cells have been investigated thoroughly by employing Impedance spectroscopy, Mott–Schottky analysis, Urbach energy analysis, and trap-state density estimations. The device prepared under the influences of in-situ substrate temperature and acoustic substrate vibration shows more than three times enhancement in PCE (3.24%) compared to that of the reference one (0.9%). A correlation between charge transport behaviour and deposition conditions has been identified for the devices. The surface roughness and rigid droplet boundaries were found to set major performance limitations. The overall resistance of the devices was found to get decreased by 70% whilst the global charge carrier mobility was found to get increased from 6.09 × 10–5 to 9.43 × 10–4 cm2 V−1 s−1 with the simultaneous application of substrate temperature and acoustic vibration, forming uniform and homogeneous films with much reduced surface roughness and droplet boundaries compared to the untreated reference devices. Systematic variation in the trap and defect-state densities were also observed. The trap-state density reduced from 5.03 × 1015 to 2.71 × 1015 cm−3 after the combined treatment of in-situ annealing and substrate vibration. Urbach energy was found to be 218.4 meV for the untreated active layer, which reduced to 177.2 meV for the active layer treated with in-situ-annealing and acoustic substrate vibration. The superior electrical properties achieved by optimizing the active layer morphology using different spray deposition conditions led to around four times enhancement in device efficiency.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology (Project no. ECR/2017/000152), and DST-INSPIRE Fellowship program for financial support. We are also thankful to Nanoscale Research Facility and Central Research Facility, IIT Delhi for the characterization facilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Organic and Hybrid Electronic Device Laboratory, Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110016, India

    Sobia Waheed, Saurabh Pareek, T. Abhijith, Rakesh Suthar, Punit Sharma & Supravat Karak

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  1. Sobia Waheed
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  2. Saurabh Pareek
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  3. T. Abhijith
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  4. Rakesh Suthar
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Contributions

Conceptualization: SK, SW, and SP; Methodology: SW, SP, and AT; Formal analysis and investigation: SW, SP, AT, RS, and PS; Writing original draft preparation: SW, SP, AT, and SK; Writing review and editing: SK; Funding acquisition: SK, and SW; Supervision: SK.

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Correspondence to Supravat Karak.

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Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. The supplementary information contains the table with photovoltaic parameter values for each device, photocurrent versus effective voltage curve, and discusses the optical microscope images of spray-coated films deposited at different conditions.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 3594 KB)

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Waheed, S., Pareek, S., Abhijith, T. et al. Understanding the influences of In-situ annealing and substrate vibration on the charge carrier dynamics of ultrasonic spray-coated polymer solar cell. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 15180–15190 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-08437-w

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