Abstract
The functionality of optoelectronic devices such as solar cells can in general strongly depend on the relative alignment of the energy levels of the involved materials. For example, an organic solar cell with a donor/acceptor heterojunction for charge separation requires that the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals of the donor material are higher in energy than the corresponding orbitals of the acceptor material. Energy levels being of crucial importance, methods are required to precisely measure the absolute position of energy levels experimentally. Several techniques are established for this purpose. Precise measurements are for example possible with ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) and photoelectron spectroscopy in air (PESA). However, a more widely used method to determine the position of energy levels with respect to vacuum is cyclic voltammetry (CV). Therefore, the present chapter gives an introduction into this technique. Besides the working principle and selected examples related to the field of polymer-based photovoltaics, the accuracy of CV measurements is discussed as well.
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Borchert, H. (2014). Cyclic Voltammetry. In: Solar Cells Based on Colloidal Nanocrystals. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 196. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04388-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04388-3_7
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