Bulk-heterojunction nanoparticle dispersions in water or alcohol can be employed as eco-friendly inks for the fabrication of organic solar cells by printing coating. However, one major drawback is need stabilizing surfactants, which facilitate formation but later hamper device performance. When surfactant-free are formulated, a strong limitation imposed dispersion concentration due to tendency ...

Anomalous transport is ever-present in many disordered organic semiconductor materials. The long-tail behavior observed in the transient photocurrent is a manifestation of anomalous transport. Owing to the fact that anomalous transport has dispersive and non-Gaussian transport dynamics, thus anomalous transport cannot be adequately described by the standard drift-diffusion equation which is a f...

The most efficient organic solar cells produced to date are bulk heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic devices based on blends of semiconducting polymers such as poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) with fullerene derivatives such as [6,6]-penyl-C61-butyric-acid-methyl-ester (PCBM). The need for blending the two components is based on the idea that the exciton diffusion length in polymers like P3...

Constructing a highly efficient bulk-heterojunction is of critical importance to the hybrid organic/inorganic solar cells. Here in this work, we introduce a novel hybrid architecture containing P3HT nanowire and CdSe nanotetrapod as bicontinuous charge channels for holes and electrons, respectively. Compared to the traditionally applied P3HT molecules, the well crystallized P3HT nanowires quali...

We report on an experimental study of the charge transfer dynamics in a P3HT : PCBM blend by means of a femtosecond fluorescence up-conversion technique. Using two-photon excitation we probe the exciton dynamics in P3HT and a P3HT : PCBM blend with a weight ratio of 1 : 1 at excitation densities of up to 6 × 1018 cm−3. In both samples we find strongly nonexponential decay traces compatible with...

Semiconducting organic-inorganic nanocomposites were judiciously crafted by placing conjugated polymers in intimate contact with inorganic tetrapods via click reaction. CdSe tetrapods were first synthesized by inducing elongated arms from CdSe zincblende seeds through seed-mediated growth. The subsequent effective inorganic ligand treatment, followed by reacting with short bifunctional ligands,...

This work presents the systematic studies of bulk hybrid heterojunction solar cells based on Cu(In, Ga)Se2 (CIGS) nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in poly(3-hexylthiophene) matrix. The CIGS NCs of approximately 17 nm in diameter were homogeneously blended with P3HT layer to form an active layer of a photovoltaic device. The blend ratios of CIGS NCs to P3HT, solvent effects on thin film morphologies,...

Pronounced ferromagnetism was observed in a crystalline blend film of conjugated polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) by using magnetic force microscopy measurements. A substantial room-temperature saturation magnetization of about 0.65 emu g−1 was measured by an alternating gradient field magnetometer. Multiple experimental evidences demonstrate...

Free carriers, polarons (P), in conjugated polymers play a key role in the performance of optoelectronic devices. Here, we present solid evidence that P can be predominantly generated from polaron pairs (PP) in a poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) film under zero electric field. P formation from PP strongly depends on temperature. The temperature dependence of P starts to change around 300 K. P3HT e...

In this study, we employ a thiol-functionalized polymer (P3HT-SH) as a leverage to tailor the nanomorphology and electronic coupling in polymer-nanocrystal composites for hybrid solar cells. The presence of the thiol functional group allows for a highly crystalline semiconducting polymer film at low thiol content and allows for improved nanomorphologies in hybrid organic-inorganic systems when ...