The molecular design, synthesis, spectroscopic and photophysical characterization of a new series of organic small molecules and transition metal-containing polymers incorporating different n-conjugated chromophores are discussed. The applications of some of these compounds in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells are also outlined. Chapter 1 contains a brief overview on the background of organic solar cells, their structures and performance in solution-processed organic BHJ devices. Chapter 2 presents the synthetic methodology and characterization of a series of new dipyrrin-based materials and their application in organic solar cells. In this section, four metal-based metallopolymers for organic solar cells have been designed, synthesized and two of them have been fabricated for BHJ organic solar cells. Through the alternation of different metal ions and boron element in the same dipyrrin framework, a series of dipyrrin-based metal complexes and BODIPY-containing compounds have been synthesized. Electrochemical analysis and DFT calculations proved that M4 with BODIPY-based structure is more efficient in optimizing the HOMO-LUMO energy level which further increases the Voc value. A full account of the preparation, characterization, photophysical and thermal properties of a new series of benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene (BDT), cyclopenta[2,1-6:3,4-6']dithiophene (CPT) and triphenylamine (TPA) centered small molecules are presented in chapters 3, 4 and 5, respectively. Different acceptor-donor-acceptor (A-D-A) based materials were prepared and employed in organic solar cells in order enhance the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the devices. Some of the materials have been found to show higher PCEs of up to 3.91%. Given the excellent solution-processability as well as performance advantage, this work provides us a feasible strategy to develop low-cost and high PCE materials in solar cell applications, which would help small molecular organic solar cells to reach a level of practical applications. In chapter 6, four low-bandgap Pt-containing polymers were synthesized and characterized by a variety of techniques. Among them, the largest λonset of 699 nm in solution and λonset of 736 nm in the thin film of P6 were observed and the corresponding energy gap Eg was estimated to be 1.77 eV and 1.68 eV, respectively. After evaluating these oxidation and reduction potentials, P6 also showed the smallest band gap of 1.65 eV with the corresponding HOMO and LUMO energy levels of -5.17 eV and -3.52 eV, respectively. Also, the molecular weights of these polymers were examined by the GPC method. The highest Mn of 24.0 kDa and Mw of 50.4 kDa with the PDI of 2.10 were observed in P8. Chapter 7 and 8 present the concluding remarks and the experimental details of the work described in Chapters 2-6.

Yang, Shihang = 銅銦鎵硒太陽能電池中白光退火系統的設計 / 楊世航. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-91). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Yang, Shihang = Tong yin jia xi tai yang neng dian chi zhong bai guang tui huo xi tong de she ji / Yang Shihang. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction to Photovoltaics --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- "Developments, markets and forecasts" --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- The physics of solar cells --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Light Absorption --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- Charge Carrier Separation --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.3 --- Solar Cell I-V Characteristics --- p.7 / Chapter 1.3 --- Classifications of Solar Cells --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.1 --- Crystalline silicon solar cell --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.2 --- Thin film solar cells --- p.12 / Chapter 1.3.3 --- Organic and polymer solar cells --- p.12 / Chapter 1.4 --- "Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells" --- p.13 / Chapter 1.4.1 --- State of the art --- p.13 / Chapter 1.4.2 --- Material properties --- p.14 / Chapter 1.4.3 --- Basic processing steps --- p.15 / Chapter 2 --- Equipment design --- p.24 / Chapter 2.1 --- System design concepts --- p.24 / Chapter 2.2 --- Sample transfer chamber --- p.26 / Chapter 2.3 --- Co-evaporation chamber --- p.28 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Load-lock chamber --- p.28 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Co-evaporation chamber --- p.31 / Chapter 2.4 --- Sputtering chambers --- p.34 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Mo sputtering chamber --- p.34 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Three targets sputtering chamber --- p.36 / Chapter 2.5 --- Other chambers --- p.38 / Chapter 3 --- Design of Rapid Thermal Processing System --- p.42 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction to RTP --- p.42 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- History and current status of RTP --- p.42 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Advantages of RTP system compared to conventional furnaces --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2 --- Computational simulation for RTP system design --- p.47 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Introduction to Ansys Fluent --- p.47 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Model setup steps --- p.54 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Physical principles --- p.57 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Models setup and comparisons --- p.62 / Chapter 3.3 --- Rapid thermal processing system --- p.76 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Se deposition chamber --- p.76 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Quartz chamber --- p.78 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Lamp frame --- p.79 / Chapter 4 --- Conclusions --- p.83 / Chapter 4.1 --- RTP heater design --- p.83 / Chapter 4.2 --- Future prospect --- p.83 / Bibliography --- p.87

Bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) is one of the most promising techniques to generate electricity with advantages of flexibility, solution processing and capability for large area device fabrication. Although the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of BHJ solar cells has already achieved over 13%, there are still problems remain to be solved. This thesis presents the binary and ternary organic BHJ devices with alternative donor:acceptor (D:A) ratios, and the charge transport properties and electronic interactions in their BHJ films. In a high performance BHJ solar cell, the commonly optimized D:A weight ratio is about 1:x, where x is commonly in excess of 1.5, when PC71BM is used as the acceptor. We demonstrated how to achieve high PCEs of BHJ solar cells by enriching the D:A weight ratios. The PCEs of the re-optimized cells were improved for the PTB7:PC71BM, PCDTBT:PC71BM, PDTSTPD:PC71BM devices. Current-voltage (JV) and admittance spectroscopy (AS) measurements indicate enhanced hole mobilities for the polymer-rich BHJs based on PTB7, PCDTBT, and PDTSTPD. At the same time, although the relative weight ratio of PC71BM is reduced, the electron mobilities are maintained due to the dispersion of fullerene domains by increased DIO concentrations. The active layer thickness of most optimized BHJ solar cells is about 100nm. The thin active layer is unfavorable for optical absorption and film coating. We employed a ternary strategy to address this problem, and the thick-film BHJ devices can retain 90% PCEs of their optimized thin-film devices. Three model systems were studied, involving PTB7:PC71BM, PTB7-Th:PC71BM and P3HT:PCBM BHJs. Into these BHJs, a ternary component, p-DTS(fbtth2)2 (DTS) is introduced. With DTS, the corresponding thick film devices have significantly improved PCEs. The ternary component DTS improves hole mobility and reduces sub-bandgap trap states. Both observations are well correlated with improved FFs of the ternary BHJ cells. Photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS) and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) results indicate that DTS behaves as conducting bridges in between two neighboring polymer segments. Most lab-based BHJ solar cells are optimized by their power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). We challenge this conventional view by showing that BHJ cells using fullerene acceptors should be optimized by their fill-factors (FFs). With the optimized-FF approach, BHJ cells tend to have higher fullerene content when compared to the BHJ cells that are optimized by PCEs. The FF-optimized BHJ cells have slightly reduced PCEs (due to smaller Jscs) compared to the PCE-optimized cells. Yet, FF-optimized cells enjoy a much better thermal stability. We demonstrate that these FF-optimized BHJs possess better-balanced electron-to-hole mobility ratios due to weakly field-dependent electron mobilities. The improved mobility ratio suppresses carrier recombination. Our results suggest that BHJ cells optimized by their PCEs should be meta-stable, and other D:A ratios should be considered for practical BHJ cell development.

Photovoltaic technology based on solution-processable organic solar cells (OSCs) provides a promising route towards a low-cost strategy to address the sharply increasing energy demands worldwide. However, up to date, the vast majority of solar cell reports have been based on spin-cast BHJ layers. Spin coating is not compatible with high speed and scalable coating processes, such as blade-coating and slot-die coating, which require the nanoscale morphology to be reproduced in scalable coating methods. And tolerance for thicker BHJ films would also facilitate high speed scalable coating. In the first part of this thesis, we investigate how pre-aggregating the conjugated polymer in solution impacts the charge transport in polymer films. We use P3HT in a wide range of molecular weights in different solvents of common use in organic electronics to investigate how they impact the aggregation behavior in the ink and in the solid state. By deliberately disentangling polymer chains via sonication of the solution in the presence of solvophobic driving forces, we show a remarkable ability to tune aggregation, which directly impacts charge transport, as measured in the context of field effect transistors. The second part of this thesis looks at the impact of the solution-coating method and the photovoltaic performance gap when applying modern BHJ inks developed for spin coating to scalable coating methods, namely blade coating. We ascribe this to significant differences in the drying kinetics between the processes. Emulating the drying kinetics of spin-coating was found to result in performance parity as well as morphological parity across several systems, resulting in demonstration of PTB7:PC71BM solar cells with efficiency of 9% and 6.5% PCEs on glass and flexible PET substrates, respectively. The last part of this thesis looks into going beyond performance parity by leveraging the differences of the scalable coating method to enable highly efficient thick solar cells which surpass the performance of spin-cast devices. High-speed wire-bar coating (up to 0.25 m/s) was used to produce OPV devices with power conversion efficiency (PCE) >10% and significantly outperforming devices prepared by spin-coating the BHJ layer for thicknesses >100 nm by maintaining a higher fill factor.

Both organic and perovskite solar cells (OSCs and PSCs, respectively) have shown remarkable progress in recent years reaching power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 17.6% and 25.2% for a single cell, respectively. These results were achieved by simultaneous advancements in organic and perovskite materials design and synthesis, as well as device and interfacial engineering. As these emerging photovoltaic technologies move closer to commercialization, further improvements in efficiencies and stability of the solar cells are needed. Interfaces in these thin-film solar cells have proven to be of tremendous importance for both device performance and degradation. This work is focused on studying recombination losses at the charge extracting layers in OSCs and PSCs and finding simple solution-processable ways of improving interfacial contacts. In the first part, we propose a simple way to improve the electron extracting properties of Phen-NaDPO, a small organic molecule widely used in OSCs, by mixing it with Sn(SCN)2. We show that this approach benefits morphology and charge transport, thus reducing recombination losses and improving overall performance of various bulk heterojunction OSCs and PSCs. In the second part, we describe the development of a multilayered system of electron transporting interlayers (ETLs) to improve the PCE and operational stability of PSCs. We sequentially deposit PC60BM, Al-doped ZnO (AZO), and small organic molecule triphenyl-phosphine oxide (TPPO), and study how the ETL properties and device performance change with each layer. We find that the trap-assisted recombination and energy level alignment in PSCs improve due to specific chemical interactions between PC60BM, AZO, and TPPO. The third part is divided into two and is focused on CuSCN, a wide bandgap inorganic molecular hole transporting material, and its application in OSCs. In the first half, we study the recombination and photogeneration processes in PC70BM-only OSCs. We demonstrate that CuSCN plays a crucial role in excitons dissociation and efficient charge transfer at the CuSCN/PC70BM interface. In the second half, we optimize CuSCN layers’ structural and electronic characteristics using a simple solvent engineering approach. We study how processing conditions affect the morphological, chemical, optical, and electronic properties of CuSCN and how they impact the OSCs’ performance.

No description available.

This thesis is a power generation study of a proposed CubeSat at Mississippi State University (MSU). CubeSats are miniaturized satellites of 10 x 10 x 10 cm in dimension. Their power source once in orbit is the sun during daylight and the batteries during eclipse. MSU CubeSat is equipped with solar panels. This effort will discuss two types of cells: Gallium Arsenide and Silicon; and which one will suit MSU CubeSat best. Once the cell type is chosen, another decision regarding the electrical power subsystem will be made. Solar array design can only be done once the choice of the electrical power subsystem and the solar cells is made. Then the power calculation for different mission durations will start along with the sizing of the solar arrays. In the last part the batteries are introduced and discussed in order to choose one type of batteries for MSU CubeSat.

As the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of single-junction solar cells approaching its theoretical limit, tandem solar cells have attracted great attention due to their ability to break this limitation. For example, the PCE of crystalline silicon-based solar cells (c-Si) reached 26.81% with an area of 274.4 cm2, approaching the theoretical limit of 29.4%. By combining the c-Si with perovskites, the theoretical PCE limitation of 29.4% can be further increased to 45%. The wide-bandgap (1.68 eV) inverted (p-i-n) perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are ideal candidates to integrate on top of narrow-bandgap solar cells to fabricate tandem solar cells, owing to the simple fabrication process and tunable bandgap. However, the PCE of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells is limited by the severe open-circuit voltage loss due to non-radiative recombination arising from trap-assisted recombination and interfacial recombination. In this thesis, Poly[(9,9-bis[3-(trimethylammonium)propyl-2,7-fluorene)]-alt-2,7- (9,9-dioctylfluorene) diiodide (PFN-I), as modification layer between hole transport layer (HTL) and perovskite, was applied to efficiently passivate the interfacial defects, moderate the growth of perovskite crystal and modify the interfacial energy level alignment to enhance hole extraction. Through comprehensive characterization, it has been observed that the introduction of PFN-I into the system effectively reduces non-radiative recombination. Therefore, a PCE of 21.9% with an open-circuit voltage of 1.24 V and a fill factor of 80% was obtained for 1.68 eV-bandgap inverted PSCs.

For the fabrication of semiconductor devices, solar cells, and infrared detectors, thin film deposition methods are required. Of the deposition methods currently available including MBE, LPE, and MOCVD; MOCVD is preferred due to its relatively low cost per wafer, versatility, and high wafer throughput. Requirements which must be considered in the design of a deposition system are discussed. An MOCVD system is designed such that MOCVD can be carried out by plasma enhanced deposition (PED) or low pressure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (LPMOCVD). As a result of the inherent characteristics of the two methods, a wide range of operational temperatures and pressures are possible. Software is developed for system control including a graphical display of the process schematic. The deposition of GaAS on Si is given as one possible application for this type system.

No description available.