Emulsion-Based RIR-MAPLE Deposition of Conjugated Polymers: Primary Solvent Effect and Its Implications on Organic Solar Cell Performance.
Abstract
Emulsion-based, resonant infrared matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (RIR-MAPLE)
has been demonstrated as an alternative technique to deposit conjugated polymer films
for photovoltaic applications; yet, a fundamental understanding of how the emulsion
target characteristics translate into film properties and solar cell performance is
unclear. Such understanding is crucial to enable the rational improvement of organic
solar cell (OSC) efficiency and to realize the expected advantages of emulsion-based
RIR-MAPLE for OSC fabrication. In this paper, the effect of the primary solvent used
in the emulsion target is studied, both experimentally and theoretically, and it is
found to determine the conjugated polymer cluster size in the emulsion as well as
surface roughness and internal morphology of resulting polymer films. By using a primary
solvent with low solubility-in-water and low vapor pressure, the surface roughness
of deposited P3HT and PCPDTBT polymer films was reduced to 10 nm, and the efficiency
of P3HT:PC61BM OSCs was increased to 3.2% (∼100 times higher compared to the first
MAPLE OSC demonstration [ Caricato , A. P. ; Appl. Phys. Lett. 2012 , 100 , 073306
]). This work unveils the mechanism of polymer film formation using emulsion-based
RIR-MAPLE and provides insight and direction to determine the best ways to take advantage
of the emulsion target approach to control film properties for different applications.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12737Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1021/acsami.6b05596Publication Info
Ge, Wangyao; Li, Nan K; McCormick, Ryan D; Lichtenberg, Eli; Yingling, Yaroslava G;
& Stiff-Roberts, Adrienne D (2016). Emulsion-Based RIR-MAPLE Deposition of Conjugated Polymers: Primary Solvent Effect
and Its Implications on Organic Solar Cell Performance. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces, 8(30). pp. 19494-19506. 10.1021/acsami.6b05596. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12737.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Adrienne Stiff-Roberts
Jeffrey N. Vinik Professor
Dr. Stiff-Roberts received both the B.S. degree in physics from Spelman College and
the B.E.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology
in 1999. She received an M.S.E. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in applied physics
in 2001 and 2004, respectively, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where
she investigated high-temperature quantum dot infrared photodetectors grown by molecular
beam epitaxy. Dr. Stiff-Roberts joined Duke University in August 2004,

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