Organic solar cells based on the spin-coated blend films of TPA-th-TPA and PCBM

In this paper, the optical and photo-induced electron transfer properties of a new conjugated molecule, 4,7-bis{5′-[4″,4″-N,N-diphenylamino-styryl]thiphen-2′-yl} -benzo[1,2,5-thiadiazole] (simplified as TPA-th-TPA), were investigated. Using TPA-th-TPA as a photoactive layer, organic solar cells with three different architectures were fabricated by spin-coating method. The photosensitive layers of these architectures comprise pure TPA-th-TPA layer, heterojunction of bi-layered TPA-th-TPA and C60, and bulk-heterojunction of TPA-th-TPA and [6, 6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blend. Furthermore, towards the bulk-heterojunction devices, the effect of the cathode materials (Mg, Ca, LiF/Al, Ba) on the performance of the devices was studied. The power conversion efficiency reached 0.26% for the device based on the blend of TPA-th-TPA and PCBM with Ba/Al as the cathode.