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Dithiol treatments enhancing the efficiency of hybrid solar cells based on PTB7 and CdSe nanorods

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Abstract

We report the fabrication of polymer/inorganic hybrid solar cells (HSCs) based on CdSe nanorods (NRs) and the semiconducting polymer PTB7. The power conversion efficiency of HSCs can be significantly enhanced by engineering the polymer/nanocrystal interface with ethanedithiol (EDT) and 1,4-benzenedithiol (1,4-BDT) treatments and reached 2.58% and 2.79%, respectively. These results were preferable to that of a pyridine-coated NR-based device (1.75%). This improvement was attributed to the thiol groups of EDT and 1,4-BDT, which can tightly coordinate the Cd ions to form Cd-thialate on CdSe NR surfaces, thereby effectively passivating the NR surface and reducing the active layer defects. Therefore, the rate of exciton generation and dissociation was enhanced and led to the improvement of the device performance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of New Energy Technology, Ningbo Institute of Material Technology and Engineering (NIMTE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315201, China

    Weining Luo, Tonggang Jiu, Chaoyang Kuang, Bairu Li & Junfeng Fang

  2. Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong, 515063, China

    Weining Luo & Fushen Lu

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  1. Weining Luo
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  2. Tonggang Jiu
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  3. Chaoyang Kuang
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Correspondence to Tonggang Jiu, Fushen Lu or Junfeng Fang.

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Luo, W., Jiu, T., Kuang, C. et al. Dithiol treatments enhancing the efficiency of hybrid solar cells based on PTB7 and CdSe nanorods. Nano Res. 8, 3045–3053 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-015-0810-2

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