Abstract
Optical-quality transparent, conducting polyaniline (PANI) thin films are suitable candidates for efficient counter electrodes for high-performance solar cells. In the first part of this work, the synthesis of highly uniform and homogenous nanostructured PANI films is reported. The film properties were assessed via scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, optical profilometry, spectrophotometry, and conductimetry. Simultaneous modeling, optimization and physical characterization of the PANI nanostructured films have not received much attention in the literature. Hence, in the second part, a multi-objective optimization approach with three objectives, namely minimum film thickness, maximum transparency, and maximum conductivity, was performed based on artificial neural network models with a novel k-fold cross-validation technique. The developed models can accurately predict the film characteristics in a wide range of design variables with most residuals remarkably less than 1.0%. Furthermore, after optimization, conductivity was increased three-fold (~ 2.2 × 10−1 S/cm) at a good level of transparency (~ 55%), which suit solar cell applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
J. Wei, F. Huang, S. Wang, L. Zhou, Y. Xin, P. Jin, Z. Cai, Z. Yin, Q. Pang, and J.Z. Zhang, Mater. Res. Bull. 106, 35 (2018).
A. Bahramian and D. Vashaee, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 143, 284 (2015).
J. Wu, Y. Li, Q. Tang, G. Yue, J. Lin, M. Huang, and L. Meng, Sci. Rep. 4, 4028 (2014).
J. Yuan, J. Gu, G. Shi, J. Sun, H.-Q. Wang, and W. Ma, Sci. Rep. 6, 26459 (2016).
M. Asyraf, M. Anwar, L.M. Sheng, and M.K. Danquah, JOM 69, 2515 (2017).
S. Bhadra, D. Khastgir, N.K. Singha, and J.H. Lee, Prog. Polym. Sci. 34, 783 (2009).
K.M. Molapo, P.M. Ndangili, R.F. Ajayi, G. Mbambisa, S.M. Mailu, N. Njomo, M. Masikini, P. Baker, and E.I. Iwuoha, Int. J. Electrochem. Sci. 7, 11859 (2012).
P. Kar and A. Choudhury, Adv. Polym. Technol. 32, E760 (2013).
J.C. Yu, J.A. Hong, E.D. Jung, D.B. Kim, S.-M. Baek, S. Lee, S. Cho, S.S. Park, K.J. Choi, and M.H. Song, Sci. Rep. 8, 1070 (2018).
J.N. Pereira, P. Vieira, A. Ferreira, A.J. Paleo, J.G. Rocha, and S. Lanceros-Méndez, J. Polym. Res. 19, 9815 (2012).
G. Wu, P. Tan, D. Wang, Z. Li, L. Peng, Y. Hu, C. Wang, W. Zhu, S. Chen, and W. Chen, Sci. Rep. 7, 43676 (2017).
X.P. Chen, Q.H. Liang, J.K. Jiang, C.K.Y. Wong, S.Y.Y. Leung, H.Y. Ye, D.G. Yang, and T.L. Ren, Sci. Rep. 6, 20621 (2016).
J.C. Wang, R. Bruttini, and A.I. Liapis, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 55, 6649 (2016).
J.B. de Lima Filho and Á.A. Hidalgo, Synth. Met. 223, 80 (2017).
S.R. Bhattacharyya, R.N. Gayen, R. Paul, and A.K. Pal, Thin Solid Films 517, 5530 (2009).
J. Schmidhuber, Neural Netw. 61, 85 (2015).
R. Simon, Resampling strategies for model assessment and selection. in Fundamentals of Data Mining in Genomics and Proteomics, (Springer, New York, 2007), pp. 173–186.
Z. Wang and G.P. Rangaiah, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 56, 560 (2017).
K. Deb, A. Pratap, S. Agarwal, and T. Meyarivan, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 6, 182 (2002).
A. Bahramian, Thin Solid Films 592, 39 (2015).
A. Bahramian, Surf. Interface Anal. 47, 1 (2015).
U. Ozdemir, B. Ozbay, S. Veli, and S. Zor, Chem. Eng. J. 178, 183 (2011).
G.H. Shafabakhsh, O.J. Ani, and M. Talebsafa, Constr. Build. Mater. 85, 136 (2015).
M. Tanzifi, S.H. Hosseini, A.D. Kiadehi, M. Olazar, K. Karimipour, R. Rezaiemehr, and I. Ali, J. Mol. Liq. 244, 189 (2017).
X. X. Wu and J. G. Liu, A new early stopping algorithm for improving neural network generalization. in: Proceedings of the 2009 Second International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation, (2009) pp. 15–18
Mathworks, Genetic Algorithm Options, MATLAB Documentation Center 2014, (2014), No. accessed 3 June 2014.
Mathworks, Global Optimization Toolbox 3.2.5 User Guide, (2014).
X. Tang and X. Yan, J. Sol-Gel. Sci. Technol. 81, 378 (2017).
M. Guglielmi, P. Colombo, F. Peron, and L.M. Degli Esposti, J. Mater. Sci. 27, 5052 (1992).
W. Zhao, L. Ye, S. Zhang, B. Fan, M. Sun, and J. Hou, Sci. Rep. 4, 6570 (2014).
D.S. Fryer, R.D. Peters, E.J. Kim, J.E. Tomaszewski, J.J. de Pablo, P.F. Nealey, C.C. White, and W.L. Wu, Macromolecules 34, 5627 (2001).
A. Bahramian, J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 132, 41858 (2015).
J.C. Manifacier, J. Gasiot, and J.P. Fillard, J. Phys. E 9, 1002 (1976).
R. Swanepoel, J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum. 16, 1215 (1983).
M.S. Ghamsari and A.R. Bahramian, High transparent sol–gel derived nanostructured TiO2 thin film. Mater. Lett. 62, 361 (2008).
J. Tauc and A. Menth, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 8–10, 569 (1972).
F. Kanwal, A. Batool, M. Adnan, and S. Naseem, Mater. Res Innov. 19, S8-354 (2015).
Y.J. Cheng, S.H. Yang, and C.S. Hsu, Chem. Rev. 109, 5868 (2009).
A.G. Baker, ARO Sci. J. Koya Univ. 7, 47 (2019).
E.M. Scherr, A.G. MacDiarmid, S.K. Manohar, J.G. Masters, Y. Sun, X. Tang, M.A. Druy, P.J. Glatkowski, V.B. Cajipe, J.E. Fischer, K.R. Cromack, M.E. Jozefowicz, J.M. Ginder, R.P. McCall, and A.J. Epstein, Synth. Met. 41, 735 (1991).
Q. Qin and R. Zhang, Electrochim. Acta 89, 726 (2013).
Mathworks, Neural Network Toolbox 8.2 User Guide (2014).
Q. Tai, B. Chen, F. Guo, S. Xu, H. Hu, B. Sebo, and X.-Z. Zhao, ACS Nano 5, 3795 (2011).
H. Bejbouji, L. Vignau, J.L. Miane, M.-T. Dang, E.M. Oualim, M. Harmouchi, and A. Mouhsen, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 94, 176 (2010).
A.A.B. Baloch, S.P. Aly, M.I. Hossain, F. El-Mellouhi, N. Tabet, and F.H. Alharbi, Sci. Rep. 7, 11984 (2017).
M. Sendova-Vassileva, H. Dikov, G. Popkirov, E. Lazarova, V. Gancheva, G. Grancharov, D. Tsocheva, P. Mokreva, and P. Vitanov, J. Phys: Conf. Ser. 514, 012018 (2014).
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the Hamedan University of Technology for financially supporting this work through Grant No. 18-96-1-3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic Supplementary Material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Medi, B., Bahramian, A. & Nazari, V. Synthesis and Characterization of Conducting Polyaniline Nanostructured Thin Films for Solar Cell Applications. JOM 73, 504–514 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-020-04361-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-020-04361-8