Magister Scientiae - MSc / Solar energy generation arises as a result of direct conversion of sunlight into electricity a by solar cell; which is mainly made up of a semiconducting material incorporated into a system. It is emerging as one of the most reliable and cost efficient renewable energy sources. Within the solar field, organic bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells have proved of being able to have a great impact in the future years; mainly due to the easy processability of the active layer and substrate, their cost effectiveness and above all, a good power conversion efficiency associated to the close 3-dimensional interpenetrating network that is generated from blending donor and acceptor semiconducting materials together in a bulk heterojunction active layer. In this research work, we therefore report on the study of a newly developed organic bulk heterojunction active layer based on a blend of a star-copolymer generation 1 poly(propylenethiophenoimine)-co-poly(ethylenedioxythiophene) (G1PPT-co-PEDOT) as donor material with N,N-diisopropylnaphthalene diimide (NDI) as acceptor material. Both materials were chemically synthesized. The synthesis of G1PPT-co-PEDOT started first by
the functionalization of generation 1 poly(propyleneimine) tetramine, G1PPI into G1PPT by condensation reaction in the presence of 2-thiophene carboxaldehyde under Nitrogen gas followed by the copolymerization of G1PPT with ethylene dioxythiophene (EDOT) monomer in the presence of ammonium persulfate, (NH4)2S2O8 as oxidant. On the other hand, NDI was also synthesized via condensation reaction of 1,4,5,8-naphthalene tetracarboxylic dianhydride in the presence of two (2) equivalences of N,N-diisopropylamine at 110 oC overnight in
DMF. Both materials were characterized using FT-IR, UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fluorescence spectroscopy, Voltammetry, HRSEM microscopy and XRD. Based on the cyclic voltammetry and UV-Vis results, we were able to calculate the HOMO, LUMO and band gap energy (Eg) values of both the donor and acceptor to be -4.03 eV, -6.287 eV and 2.25 eV for iii the donor G1PPT-co-PEDOT respectively and -4.302 eV, -7.572 eV and 3.27 eV for the acceptor respectively. From these results, the energy diagram for both donor and acceptor was drawn and it comes out that the separation between the HOMO of the donor and the LUMO of the acceptor ΔEg = 1.985 eV, the ideal value for a good donor-acceptor combination. Also the offset energy that is, the energy difference between the LUMO of the donor and the LUMO of the acceptor is 0.302 eV.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/3281 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Yonkeu, Anne Lutgarde Djoumessi |
| Contributors | Iwuoha, Emmanuel |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | uwc |
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