Simulation and optimization of the performance of organic photovoltaic cells based on capped copolymers for bulk heterojunctions

• PV parameters.
• Study of ITO/PEDOT/P3HT-PCBM + wt% P3HT-b-PS/Al organic photovoltaic cells.
• Analysis of IV curves.

Recently many investigations have been done to improve the performance of solar cells photovoltaic. One of this devices developed is the Bulk Heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells based on poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)/[6, 6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blend which have been fabricated by spin-coating. It is known that the nanostructure of the active layer of this device has an important impact on the photovoltaic performances. In this work, we analyze the results obtained on solar cells using a copolymer P3HT-b-PS based on poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as a donor block and polystyrene (PS) as a soft block, their compatibility with the blend of P3HT/PCBM at various weight percentages (0%–5%). The addition of this weight percentage is in order to improve the performance of polymer solar cells. It has been demonstrated that the addition of a small amount of P3HT-b-PS (from 0.5%–1.5%) led to an increase in photovoltaic efficiency compared to devices made from P3HT/PCBM only. To study the impact of the added amount of the P3HT-b-PS on the performances of the fabricated organic cells, we used an equivalent circuit model based on single diode model with five photovoltaic parameters. Then, we extracted these physical parameters of the organic photovoltaic cells such as the saturation current density, the series and shunt resistances, the ideality factor and the photogenerated current density from the experimental characteristics (J–V) in the dark and under illumination. We proposed and developed the used procedure based on this model and we resolved the analytic equations of the density-current using the Lambert W-function. A good agreement between the theoretical model and the experimental data of electrical characteristics is obtained illustrating the enhancement of the addition of a small amount of P3HT-b-PS (≤1.5%) in the P3HT/PCBM blend on the characteristics of BHJ organic photovoltaic cells.

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