Improving the photovoltaic response of a poly(3-octylthiophene)/n-Si heterojunction by incorporating double-walled carbon nanotubes

Poly(3-octylthiophene)/n-Si heterojunction solar cells were studied with and without incorporation of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNs) in the polymer layer. The performance of the device improves significantly by the incorporation of DWCNs. We report a power conversion efficiency, open circuit voltage, short-circuit current density and fill factor of 0.49%, 0.53 V, 5.9 mA cm−2 and 0.15 respectively for an un-optimized cell containing DWCNs. Reference cells without DWCNs show a much lower performance. DWCN incorporation yields better hole transport, easy exciton splitting and suppression of charge recombination, thereby improving photovoltaic action. DWCN seems a promising material for improving hole transport in organic solar cells

Improving photovoltaic response of poly„3-hexylthiophene…/n-Si heterojunction by incorporating double walled carbon nanotubes

Poly(3-hexylthiophene)/n-Si heterojunction solar cells were studied with and without incorporation of double walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNs) in the polymer layer. Performance of the device improves by manyfold by incorporation of DWCN. The authors report power conversion efficiency, open circuit voltage, short-circuit current density, and fill factor of 0.026%, 0.446 V, 0.3398 mA/cm2, and 0.17, respectively, for an unoptimized cell containing DWCN. Reference cells without DWCNs show much lower performance. DWCN incorporation yields better hole transport, easy exciton splitting, and suppression of charge recombination, thereby improving photovoltaic action. DWCN seems promising materials for improving hole transport in organic solar cells

Volatile organic compounds are ghosts for organic solar cells

All our efforts to demonstrate a multifunctional device – photovoltaic gas sensor (i.e. solar cell which show photovoltaic action depending on the gas / volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the surrounding atmosphere) yielded negative results. Photovoltaic performance of the organic solar cells under study degraded – almost permanently by exposing them to volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Although, the proposed multifunctional device could not be demonstrated; Present investigations yielded very important result that organic solar cells have problems not only with oxygen and humidity (known facts) but also with many VOCs and hazardous gases – making lamination / encapsulation step mandatory for their practical utilizatio

Field electron emission of double walled carbon nanotube film prepared by drop casting method

Thick films of double walled carbon nanotubes (DWCN) were deposited on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates by drop casting method and were studied for their field electron emission property in a parallel plate configuration using bare ITO coated glass as counter electrode. They show excellent field electron emission property with low turn-on-field of about 0.8 V/lm and threshold field of about 1.8 V/lm. Field enhancement factor calculated from the non-saturated region of the FN plot is about 1715. Field electron emission current was observed to be stable up to 3000 min, indicating thereby that DWCNs are excellent electron emitters with appreciable stable performance

Double-walled carbon nanotubes-incorporated donor–acceptor-type organic photovoltaic devices using poly(3-octylthiophene) and C60

Donor–acceptor-type photovoltaic devices with a heterojunction between regioregular poly(3-octylthiophene) (P3OT) and C60 are fabricated with and without the addition of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNs) in the polymer layer. Incorporation of DWCNs in the polymer layer improves the performance of the device by many folds, which is attributable to improved exciton dissociation and better charge transport leading to the suppression of charge carrier recombination. We report an opencircuit voltage, short-circuit current density, fill factor and conversion efficiency (%) of approximately 0.37 V, 0.014 mA/cm2,0.22 and 0.001%, respectively, for an unoptimized device incorporating DWCNs