TY - JOUR
T1 - Sources of Thermal Power Generation and Their Influence on the Operating Temperature of Organic Solar Cells
AU - Mehdizadeh Rad, Hooman
AU - Sreedhar Ram, Kiran
AU - Mehdizadeh-Rad, Farhad
AU - Ompong, David
AU - Setsoafia, Daniel Dodzi Yao
AU - Elumalai, Naveen Kumar
AU - Zhu, Furong
AU - Singh, Jai
N1 - Funding Information:
F.Z. thanks the support by the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (GRF/12302419, C5037-18GF, and N_HKBU201/19).
PY - 2022/2/1
Y1 - 2022/2/1
N2 - Thermal stability, closely associated with the operating temperature, is one of the desired properties for practical applications of organic solar cells (OSCs). In this paper, an OSC of the structure of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:PCBM/ZnO/Ag was fabricated, and its current-voltage (J-V) characteristics and operating temperature were measured. The operating temperature of the same OSC was simulated using an analytical model, taking into consideration the heat transfer, charge carrier drift-diffusion and different thermal generation processes. The simulated results agreed well with the experimental ones. It was found that the thermalization of charge carriers above the band gap had the highest influence on the operating temperature of the OSCs. The energy off-set at the donor/acceptor interface in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) was shown to have a negligible impact on the thermal stability of the OSCs. However, the energy off-sets at the electrode/charge-transporting layer and BHJ/charge-transporting layer interfaces had greater impacts on the operating temperature of OSCs at the short circuit current and maximum power point conditions. Our results revealed that a variation over the energy off-set range from 0.1 to 0.9 eV would induce an almost 10-time increase in the corresponding thermal power generation, e.g., from 0.001 to 0.01 W, in the cells operated at the short circuit current condition, contributing to about 16.7% of the total solar power absorbed in the OSC.
AB - Thermal stability, closely associated with the operating temperature, is one of the desired properties for practical applications of organic solar cells (OSCs). In this paper, an OSC of the structure of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:PCBM/ZnO/Ag was fabricated, and its current-voltage (J-V) characteristics and operating temperature were measured. The operating temperature of the same OSC was simulated using an analytical model, taking into consideration the heat transfer, charge carrier drift-diffusion and different thermal generation processes. The simulated results agreed well with the experimental ones. It was found that the thermalization of charge carriers above the band gap had the highest influence on the operating temperature of the OSCs. The energy off-set at the donor/acceptor interface in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) was shown to have a negligible impact on the thermal stability of the OSCs. However, the energy off-sets at the electrode/charge-transporting layer and BHJ/charge-transporting layer interfaces had greater impacts on the operating temperature of OSCs at the short circuit current and maximum power point conditions. Our results revealed that a variation over the energy off-set range from 0.1 to 0.9 eV would induce an almost 10-time increase in the corresponding thermal power generation, e.g., from 0.001 to 0.01 W, in the cells operated at the short circuit current condition, contributing to about 16.7% of the total solar power absorbed in the OSC.
KW - Energy off-sets
KW - Operating temperature
KW - Organic solar cell
KW - Thermal power
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123434211&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/nano12030420
DO - 10.3390/nano12030420
M3 - Article
C2 - 35159768
AN - SCOPUS:85123434211
SN - 2079-4991
VL - 12
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - Nanomaterials
JF - Nanomaterials
IS - 3
M1 - 420
ER -
