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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Identification of green solvents for organic solar cells using P3HT and PC60BM

Vanhecke, Ruud January 2015 (has links)
The importance of renewable energy sources is becoming clearer and clearer as unsustainable energy sources are running out and global warming is getting worse. Energy derived from sunlight is already commonly used, but more energy can be produced from sunlight when solar cells become cheaper. Organic solar cells use organic compounds as semiconductors which can be prepared from solutions, resulting in lower production costs. However, these semiconductors;Poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-Phenyl-C61-butric acid methyl ester, are commonly dissolved inhalogenated and aromatic solvents. These solvents have toxic properties, which is why alternative solvents should be identified. Potential solvents were predicted by using the Hansen solubilityparameters and thin films were prepared by spin-coating the solutions. The thin films were evaluated with absorption spectroscopy, the fluorescence spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Since the alternative solvents had lower solubilites than the commonly used solvents, i.e., chlorobenzene, ortho-dichlorobenzene and chloroform, the absorption of the films with new solvents were lower as well. Using tetrahydrofuran resulted in the highest absorption of the used solvents, while xylene hada better film morphology. Increasing the absorption was attempted by spin-coating multiple thin films on top each other or by using a lower rotational speed. Spin-coating multiple films had nouniform effect on the absorption, while lowering the rotational speed increased the absorption, but not enough to equal the original absorption. Contrasting the results of the absorption spectra, the morphology improved when multiple layers were used while the film with the lower rotational speed’s morphology got worse. In conclusion, tetrahydrofuran and xylene are the best alternative solvents and using multiple layers as well as decreasing the rotational speed show improvements oneither the morphology or the absorption.

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