Green Approach for In-Situ Growth of CdS Nanorods in Low Band Gap Polymer Network for Hybrid Solar Cell Applications

Ramil K. Bhardwaj, Vishal Bharti, Abhishek Sharma, Dibyajyoti Mohanty, Vikash Agrawal, Nakul Vats, Gauri D. Sharma, Neeraj Chaudhary, Shilpa Jain, Jitender Gaur, Kamalika Banerjee, Suresh Chand

J & S Research and Innovations, Delhi, India.
Physics of Energy Harvesting, CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, India.
Physics of Energy Harvesting, CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, India; School of Science, India Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India.
School of Science, India Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India.

DOI: 10.4236/anp.2014.33015                

Abstract

In-situ growth of CdS nanorods (NRs) has been demonstrated via solvothermal, in a low band gap polymer, poly [[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy] benzo [1,2-b:4,5-b’] dithiophene-2,6-diyl] [3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl) carbonyl] thieno [3,4-b] thiophenediyl]] (PTB7). It is a high yielding, green approach as it removes use of volatile and hazardous chemicals such as pyridine as ligand which are conventionally used to synthesize precursors of CdS (NRs). Moreover the solvothermal process is a zero emission process being a close vessel synthesis and hence no material leaching into the atmosphere during the synthesis. The PTB7:CdS nanocomposite has been characterized by SEM, XRD, FTIR, UV-visible spectroscopy techniques. The photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy study of PTB7 with CdS NRs has shown significant PL quenching by the incorporation of CdS NRs in PTB7; this shows that CdS NRs are efficient electron acceptors with the PTB7. The PTB7:CdS is used as active layer in the fabrication of hybrid solar cells (HSC) as donor-acceptor combination in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) geometry. The HSCs fabricated using this active layer without any additional supporting fullerene based electron acceptor has given power conversion efficiency of above 1%.

Keywords

CdS Nanorods, PTB7, In-Situ Growth, Solvothermal, Hybrid Solar Cell

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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