Improved energy conversion efficiency of ZnO/polythiophene solar cell in Ga-doped ZnO nanorod array photoanode

Abstract

We reported the fabrication and doping effect of Ga-doped ZnO nanorods/electropolymerized polythio-phene(e-PT) hybrid photovoltaic(h-PV) devices. Ga-Doped ZnO nanorod array photoanode devices were fabricated via hydrothermally growing nanorods on sol-gel spin-coating ZnO seed layer, and then the nanorod array was im-mersed into a thiophene solution to yield a thin polythiophene film by electrochemically polymerization. Afterwards, a thin layer of Al was deposited on the surface of polythiophene to make an electrode for photovoltaic measurement. The ZnO nanorods with different Ga-doping contents were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction(XRD), scan-ning electron micrograph(SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS). Photovoltaic J-V characterization was performed on the e-PT/ZnO bilayer and bulk heterojunction(BHJ) devices. Though the unsubstituted polythiophene is not an ideal polymer material for solar cells with high power conversion efficiency, it is a sound model for the study on the effect of dopant in hybrid materials. The results indicate that doping Ga can substantially improve the power conversion efficiency of the ZnO-polythiophene solar cell.

Keywords

Solar cell / Energy conversion / Ga-Doped ZnO

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